Weather comments from our weather page early this morning:  

6:30 am:   The last day of summer.    Battling some storms and rain (isolated in nature) with showers offshore filtering on to shore at times .  Rain early at Vilano, Downtown,  Davis Shores  and more.  Clearing skies later in the morning.   It feels great outside with mild air temperatures early this morning.   Breezy with the high air temp today only 83.   Looking ahead: Dryer over the weekend.    

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8:00 am:  Early morning photos are up in box #1 and you can see the waves are bigger and appear to be cleaning up, as of report time.  Because ot this, going to bump up the surf factor from the early morning call.   Had it as a 2.75 early and moved it to a 3.5 on our 1-5 scale surf factor.  Lol it’s really a 1-10 scale but so conservative many think it is a 1-5 scale.   In any event, the waves look a little cleaner especially when compared to yesterday.   Bigger and cleaner as of report time. And the shorter duration swell makes for less close outs as the lines are not as long.  All good news for now.  Now with that said, it could get messed up real fast as the wind may blow like stink, we will see….   …

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11:15 am:   Oh as predicted by NOAA and Dean , the wind has picked up and chopped up the surf quite a bit.  So will need to downgrade the surf factor on the next report, for sure.   It’s super choppy now.  With that said, there are some larger chunky north swelled waves pushing through, and an increasing current from north to south.   More power shaping up too….

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3:00 pm:   New afternoon photos are up in box #2 and you can see how large the surf has become. Much larger and super drifty now.   Slamming on the inside at the higher tide.   The break will move outside as the tide drops.    A super strong current from north to south.  Some easitly head high waves.    We didn’t drop our surf factor too much as there are some large potentially super fun long lefts to be had.   The problem is, the paddle out factor is at a 4.5 (on a 1-5 scale) as it’s a super hard paddle out with the ‘one wave after another’ super consistent surf.   Not easy surfing as it’s a lot of work paddling out for that Friday happy hour surf session today….

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3:35 pm:   Why did it get so big so fast?   Well one reason is the system offshore is now Tropical Storm Ophelia with 60 mph winds!   See where Tropical Storm Ophelia is heading here

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Tomorrow is the first day of Fall, so we are getting ready with new O’Neill wetsuit tops – just in!   Here are the Vests, here are short sleeve tops , and here are Long Sleep Tops .   These 3 types of O’Neill wetsuit tops are available both online and in store.  Come by the shop and check them out! 

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Check out our new Vilano Cam.   Actually it’s a little north of North Beach, located just south of Fire Station #9, South Ponte Vedra (SPV).   Here is the link: New Cam

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Here is the overview wind map,  tropical Atlantic Map and here is the Map centered on St. Augustine. Click.on the link, then zoom out to see wind speed/direction and the fetch that generates our waves. Here is the weekly weather forecast for St.Augustine Beach, and the 5-day NWS Marine Forecast for Northeast Florida coastal waters. September (so far) has seen a decent run of tropical-origin sizeable surf. Dean’s 7-Day Surf Forecast details the decent lingering swell Saturday with lighter offshore wind, then diminishing surf from Ophelia Sunday after it slams the Outer Banks, with a look ahead to the next swell building late in the work week.