Best surfing conditions.?
Question:Hey there!
I'm learning to surf and the nearest surf beach is like 90 mins drive away.
How can I tell when the best surf will be?
Windy days? Calm days? High tide? Low tide? Please help if you can, I can't keep making the drive only to be dissapointed!!
Answers:
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Depending on where you live, local surf shops will set up websites or a phone number that you can call to see the surf report for the day. I find that the one around here (Charleston, SC) is always pretty acurate. It would have helped if you gave your location.Also, I usually check the national weather service website. Basically, all you do is put in your (city, state) or (zip) of the nearest break, scroll down to the map on the right side and click out in the water offshore from your beach. It will give you the wave heights from one of their buoys. I don't go out unless the offshore waves are at least 3 ft.
The top link is our local surf report/cam. Search the internet for one close to you.
The second is our local NOAA report. If you look at the top of the page, there is a place to enter the info i mentioned above.
It all depends on where you live. If you are surfing an ocean, then 'ideal' conditions would be no wind or slightly offshore winds, mid tide, and waves of course. Check out http://www.surfline.com or http://www.wetsand.com for surf reports. If you're surfing a lake or something, then I have no idea. I personally feel checking out the surf is part of being a surfer. I mean don't get me wrong, I'll check out the online reports too but sometimes you just gotta go to see it for yourself.
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i live about a 30-40 min drive from everywhere i surf,so i face a similar dilema. to make such a drive to the beach there are two basic conditions that are needed. you need swell in the water and you need mellow wind.b-money is right on with noaa. its what all responsible water-men and women use to know what kind of oceanic swell exists. this website: https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/public/ww3/in... is called the global wam. it predicts oceanic swell up to about a week into the future. you also want to check the current buoy readings through their buoy center here: http://seaboard.ndbc.noaa.gov/ just find the nearest one that is offshore and reads and reports swell. if it's above 8ft or so and the period is 13+ seconds you should have good swell. this is kind of an art that you will learn and eventually master. it's data that must be interpretted by the viewer.
dont use wetsand.com, in my experience it has been completely unreliable. surfline.com also has a good report, but you have to pay and they just draw their data from noaa, so you're paying for a person's interpretation rather than doing it yourself, and they don't really clarify anything anyway.
wind is the trickier part. you probably have heard that a lot of wind is bad. basically true. wind goes three general ways (as surfers think anyway) offshore (land to sea) onshore (sea to land) and sideshore (ya know). if it's onshore it makes it real sloppy. if it's going to be over 5 knots onshore, i would only surf somewhere with good windshade (like in front of a tall cliff or with lots of kelp in the water). offshore is great. it holds the wave up and makes it barrel. however, if it's over 15 or so knots, it also gets sloppy. sideshore kinda sucks, but if it's bellow 8 or so you'll get some waves.
so sites for wind, i like intellicast.com because it gives a nice visual model, but it isn't always right. weatherunderground.com is pretty trustworthy. just type in the city nearest your spot and look at the direction and speed of the wind and think about how that orients in respect to your potential surf spots. surfline's website is acutally quite good for wind too. not worth paying for, but a lot of their free information is quite helpful.
ok, so in theory let's imagine things are looking good, now you're thinking tides. well every spot in the world has a different specific tide that makes it "work" best. one of my favorite spots has a really good left from about 2.5 hrs before high tide until high tide, and after it turns and starts going down a right comes alive. you have to ask around or do it the hard way (which gains you more respect) and do trial and error. eventually you will get to the point where you will look at all the data in front of you (swell wind direction and tideds) and figure out what places will have all conditions working best at given times, but it's difficult and hit or miss. i dont go online for tides, i just have a book.
starting out, in california for example, you would want to find a day where there was just good swell and not strong nw winds, and then try to hit a tide you knew at a spot or just get lucky somewhere. if you are surfing a spot and you know that it's "on," definately make a mental note of the conditions that existed.
hope that helps, dont overthink it now ;)
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