It's Easy as 1-2-3
Back in the days, I remember when my mom became concerned that I was throwing my life away chasing waves. She would always say, ”If you like the ocean so much, why don’t you become an oceanographer or a marine biologist or something?” This sounded ridiculous at the time. I didn’t want to study currents and storm systems. I wanted to go surfing and ride them. Little did I realize that as a surfer I would spend almost as much time reading weather charts, checking buoy readings, and eyeing the current ocean conditions as I did in the water. Dammit! My mom is always right. I could have been getting paid for all this fun.
And that’s just what surf forecasting is. It’s an interesting, intricate, and satisfying puzzle that serves as both a hobby as well as a functional tool in scheduling your surf time. There is nothing worse than showing up the day after a great swell and getting barraged by “You should’ve been here yesterday.” Or “You missed it.” Therefore, in order to better pick your sick days and catch the best possible waves, every surfer should be versed in the basics of surf forecasting.
The Waves We Love
First and foremost, let’s analyze the dynamics of the wave itself. There are few things in this world so beautiful. Waves begin from some sort of disturbance in the ocean, whether it is a storm or earthquake, just like if you dropped a rock into a calm pool of water. Ripples emanate concentrically from that energy source in all directions until they encounter the edge of the pool and disappear. The same is true in the open ocean where storms form and create wind. This wind blows and pushes the water all in one direction. As this wind blows over a large area, the small choppy chunks of wind-blown water combine to create waves. The longer and more powerfully the wind blows and the bigger the area over which this wind blows, the bigger the waves will be. Hurricanes pack strong winds but cover a relatively small area while winter storms carry along various wind speeds but can cover massive distances. As a result, different storm systems create different types of waves.
Waves can be divided into two basic types: wind waves and swells. Wind waves are created by storms that blow for a short time. When a wave is still very close to the storm that created it and still under its immediate influence, it is called a wind wave. These waves are poorly organized and quickly lose their energy. On the other hand, swells are produced as a powerful storm pushes waves away from its origin. Swells are the best waves to ride and become better organized and well-groomed the further they travel. The choppy bits that make up wind waves have a chance to gather speed and combine into longer more powerful masses of energy. If you have ever had the fortune to see Hawaiian waves arrive after traveling thousands of miles from powerful Arctic storm systems, you would immediately understand how they differ from the ugly, wind chop experienced by Florida’s east coast, for example. When there is little or no wind to disorganize a swell as it arrives and all that is experienced is the clean, raw energy of the waves, this is what we hear termed a “ground swell.”
