Welcome Back to J-Bay

Jordy Smith, John John Florence, Matt Wilkinson and Adriano de Souza greeted the local press on Tuesday night in J-Bay. - WSL / Kelly Cestari

Event towers are up and the pros are primed. The waves have been firing and the latest forecast is pointing to the strong possibility of a Wednesday start of the J-Bay Open. Here's the latest update from Surfline's Kevin Wallis.

CT Stars Heating Up J-Bay

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Elite tour stars are celebrating their return to Jeffreys Bay with some high-quality sessions at Supertubes.

Swell/Surf Outlook We'll see medium size SW/WSW swell mix for Wednesday. The surf will be from a couple different sources: a more distant storm that set up the longer period and more favorably angled SW swell (225-210) and a closer, more compact storm now tracking toward J-Bay that will produce a more shadowed, mid period WSW swell (250-230).

Note that only a small percentage of the WSW swell will wrap into J-Bay due to the shadowed swell direction but because the swell will be large in the offshore/outer waters, we still expect pretty good size surf. We'll watch for waves in the head high to a couple feet overhead range, with occasional larger sets very possible. Except a cool/cold, blustery day with very strong offshore flow and showers possible through the middle part of the day.

John John's J-Bay Flight Test

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J-Bay's cross breeze proves useful for John John Florence during his early-morning test flights.

By Thursday the surf should be steadily trending down, although still fun/contestable in the morning, with much lighter wind trending side/offshore (NW).

The next swell on the radar looks possible for the weekend, potentially building as early as Friday late afternoon/evening based on current model guidance. While there is some uncertainly on precise timing and size, at this point we expect to see stronger surf than what we'll see on Wednesday. One drawback, at least at this point, is onshore flow could prevail Saturday afternoon and Sunday (with more favorable wind possible for the first half of Saturday). Stay tuned, we'll refine details over the next few days.

Going further out, long range model guidance currently points to rather slow surf early/mid next week as the swell from the weekend trends down and nothing new of real significance is expected at this time. However, the latest model guidance points to fun/mid size swell over the last three or so days of the event waiting period. Stay tuned.