A small summer low crossed the state last week.  You could almost call it a tropical system.

 

It never really reached tropical wave strength, but did send small ground swell to West Central Florida once it reached the balmy gulf waters.

The swell reached many of the hubs of surfing in West Florida, but left others flat.    The feature of the storm that predicted where it would send swell was it’s location in the gulf during it’s peak strength.   You’ll see from the radar image above (green storm mass) that the storm entered the gulf into the deep southern regions of West Florida.  It came off the state near Boca and Captiva.  When storms are in the southern gulf almost all of the south facing spots receive swell.  There is a small region that does not receive many of these swells.

 

Some people criticize north-west central Florida for being unusually shallow compared to the rest of the west central Florida region, however if you look at the image above, you’ll see the continental shelf is very similar across all of west Florida.  The continental shelf is not the reason that some parts of west Florida outperform other parts of west Florida on some south swells.

What I mean by outperform is, the southern counties of west Florida and even southern Pinellas County receives surf producing swell energy on south swells while north Pinellas County remains comparatively flat.

 

 

The northern part of the Pinellas County peninsula has a completely different angle than the rest of West Florida. Because it faces toward the North, it is a preferable region for Winter swells.  Additionally, the western most point of the Pinellas County peninsula and much of that point cuts off the swell sent from storms in the southern gulf. This recent storm wasn’t far enough into the gulf and it didn’t quite pack the punch to create the wrap around effect needed when storms are that far south to pump swell into the region where these photos were taken (Clearwater).

If you live in or near this northern region you could make the nearly two hour drive south or you could stay around the region and tune your surf ability with the slip and slide of a skimboard.  If you found your way to the beaches of the southern part of west Florida, you can chalk this swell as a score, waves for west Florida.