SoCal Surf Forecast Achieves Unprecedented Honesty With Phrase ‘Wallow in Mediocrity’
From Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA — In what forecasters are calling the most honest surf report in the history of Southern California meteorology, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Coast Division issued a statement Monday confirming that the ocean will continue to produce waves that are, and the agency chose this word carefully, fine.
“We will continue to wallow in mediocrity for at least the next week,” the forecast stated, a phrase that the agency’s communications director acknowledged was “probably the most unfiltered thing we’ve put in a public document” and that Southern California surfers called “honestly kind of refreshing.”
The Conditions in Detail
The forecast projects a series of small, inconsistent pulses playing what the agency memorably described as “Russian Roulette up and down the coast.” A combo of NW and SW swell will produce knee-to-waist surf for most beaches, with better south and west-facing breaks possibly seeing inconsistent larger sets. Water temperatures at Malibu are running 63 degrees, Santa Monica 64, South Bay 64, Huntington 62, Newport 62, and Oceanside 65.
“Sixty-two degrees in May,” said Brock Pendleton, 41, of Seal Beach, pulling on a 4/3 wetsuit that he was now forced to justify to his wife, who had asked whether he needed it given the time of year. “That’s the ocean’s way of telling you that California is not actually a tropical destination and you’ve been lying to yourself.”
Pendleton noted that he would be surfing regardless.
The Mediocrity Index
Dr. Waverly Stinson, Director of Expectations Management at the Coastal Research Institute of Southern California, said the current forecast represented “a 6.2 on the Mediocrity Index,” a proprietary measurement tool that his organization developed for exactly this kind of week.
“A 6.2 means: you should go because it’s better than not surfing, but you shouldn’t take a day off work for it unless you were going to take a day off work anyway,” Dr. Stinson explained. “At 7.0 we classify conditions as Legitimately Worth Calling In Sick. At 5.0 we classify them as Only For People Who Need a Mental Health Day. At 4.0 we classify them as Not Worth It But Some People Will Go Anyway.”
Dr. Stinson acknowledged that 4.0 conditions also produce a high volume of Instagram posts in which the waves appear larger than they were, which the Institute tracks separately under the Optimism Index.
What Is Coming
According to the WaveCast SoCal forecast, a moderately sized NW ground swell is due by Tuesday the 5th, coming from 305 degrees with periods of 16-17 seconds, producing chest-plus sets at standout west-facing spots while leaving breaks with minimal westerly exposure at waist-high. This represents a meaningful improvement over the current mediocrity and has been described by forecasters as “something to look forward to in the way that a dentist appointment is something to look forward to when you’ve had a toothache.”
In the meantime, forecasters advise Southern California surfers to: be realistic, bring the longboard, and under no circumstances check the surf report for El Porto between 8 and 9 a.m. on a Saturday, because whatever they see there will not be what they hoped for.
The El Nino Speculation
Hopes are high in the surfing community for a speculated super El Nino for the end of 2026 into 2027, which would produce the kind of conditions that make the current knee-to-waist forecast seem like the preamble to something worth waiting for. Forecasters have described the probability of a super El Nino as “plausible,” “not impossible,” and “genuinely we don’t know but people keep asking.”
Southern California surfers are treating “plausible” as a confirmed appointment and have already begun making plans.
More surf news: The Daily Mash.
The mediocrity forecast also raises the perennial Southern California question of what you do with yourself when the surf is not good. The answers that the surf community has developed over decades of not-great surf include: skateboarding, which is surfing on concrete and which many surfers regard as the same activity in a different medium; swimming, which is surfing without the board and with the indignity of doing laps in a pool while thinking about what the ocean is doing; and watching surf footage, which is surfing vicariously with the specific bittersweet quality of looking at photographs of good food when you are not hungry enough to eat but not full enough to be satisfied. The current forecast period has produced a meaningful uptick in all three activities. The ocean remains indifferent to this uptick.
The Southern California surf community continues to absorb, adapt, and carry on — through mediocre swells, regulatory frameworks, shark closures, parking apps, and wave pool openings — with the specific equanimity of people who have chosen to base a significant portion of their identity on an activity that the ocean controls and they do not. The ocean does not read the legislation, check the parking app, or acknowledge the renaissance. It produces what it produces. The surfers show up early. This has always been the arrangement and neither party has proposed changing it. The session ends. The parking lot empties. The ocean continues producing what it produces. Tomorrow the same surfers will check the same apps and make the same calculation about whether it is worth going. It is always worth going. This has always been true and the current forecast does not change it.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/