The National Weather Service has issued a high surf advisory, saying wave faces on Oahu’s North Shore are expected to build to as much as 12 to 18 feet later this afternoon.

And the accompanying surf forecast says there is a “strong potential for warning level surf late this weekend into the middle of next week.”
Some surf forecasters and big wave watchers are suggesting waves having 40-foot faces are a possibility, with the surf being the biggest it’s been in the past 15 years.
Tim Craig of the National Weather Service Honolulu Forecast Office said “it’s a bit early” to predict how big the surf is going to get.
“It depends on which (forecasting) models you’re looking at,” Craig said. “All were saying right now is that we we could very likely see warning-level surf by the middle of of next week if not before.”
However, the potential for “very high surf” having wave faces of 25-feet or much more, “is there,” Craig said.
“There’s a big storm and low-pressure area with gale-force winds about 1,000 miles north of Hawaii,” Craig said.
The big swells that generate monster surf on Hawaii shores typically come out of an area to the North of Japan or to the south of the Aleutian Islands, where the current mid-Pacific storm is lraging, Craig said.
“We’re looking at it very closely. If the models are correct, we definitely have some very high-level surf coming our way,” Craig said.
The Hawaii Surf News Network isn’t hedging any bets. It’s forecast calls for surf with face values of 20 to 40 feet for this coming Monday and Tuesday.
John Cummings, spokesman for the city Department of Emergency Management, said the agency has scheduled a meeting for 11 a.m. tomorrow to talk about the high surf forecast and what action might need to be taken.
"Our city, state and non-government partners such as the Red Cross will be at the meeting to review our (contingency) plans," Cummings said.
"We may keep some staff on standby over the week end if the forecast suggests we need to," he said.