Santa Barbara Summer Wrap-Up 2002

		Home Surf Reports Summer Wrap-up 2002

		Below is my take on the summer in Santa Barbara for 2002. Summer is defined as starting when swells first began from the south, and ending when the NW began to be more prominent then the SW. Mostly discussed is Hurricane Swell's although there were some decent Southern-Hemi swells in there too. This is my subjective take from my attempts to get waves where-ever they were. I know i missed out on days and those aren't documented here really. But, if you remember something I don't, let me know and i'll add it in. May. The summer started out on Thursday, May 29 with the arrival of Hurricane Alma on Santa Barbara's shores. Alma was the first tropical system of the summer and it brought good waves for a wave hungry crowd. The swell angle that it produced made some sleepy summer spots break pretty good. It came in right after the full moon so dawn sessions were super low tide and the dusk sessions were at high tide. The finest waves in quite some time and it wouldn't get this good again until the end of July. June. I didn't write down a single note from June. Mostly Flat. July. Around July 11 Tropical Depression TD-4E got named Cristina which I thought would bring us waves but really didn't. Thursday, July 24 saw the arrival of Tropical Storm Douglas. This was followed a few days later by Elida. Douglas was fun but brought a lot of weather with it, but again came during the Spring Tides which made the dawn patrols a little difficult. Elida provided big waves out of the Island Shadow but wasn't nearly as steep as Alma so didn't light up SB as much.. August. Fausto showed up on Saturday, August 24 and it gave us some really fun waves but again some crazy weather and tides that made some sessions less then ideal. September. The beginning of the month had Hurricane Genieve bring a little bit of swell in. But what to me was the highlight of the summer swell season was Hurricane Hernan. I think we had waves from these two Hurricanes from Sep 3-10 where you could get waves every day. Hernan was making Newport Double Overhead (or so I heard) and well overhead in Ventura (or so I experienced). It gave us some humid and tropical conditions with some amount of rain 3 days in a row. Middle of September had some good glass off sessions at some beach breaks, I suppose from Wind Swell. The end of the month had small SW and NW swells sorta trading off on each other...24th a fun NW....29th a fun SW...and then September spilled into a flat early October. In summary not a bad summer considering we are talking about Santa Barbara. I just don't even expect waves in SB in the summer. I expect to do a lot of driving to get waves. But we actually had quite a few days with waves right here in town. And if you were willing to drive for 45 minutes you could get really good waves. Not a big traveling summer for me but managed to squeeze in only 1 central coast trip, 2 So-Cal trips, 1 Boat Trip, and 1 baja trip. Looking forward to Winter....

		Santa Barbara Surfing, an open content site. Created by Tim Maddux, Maintained by Pope

Summer Wrap-up 2002