Global Surf Adventures

In our penultimate article on surfing and the weather we will look at windswell and wave periods in relation to your local beach.

There are 2 main types of swell you will be intereseted in undertsanding as a surfer;  groundswell and locally created windswell.

Windswell

Locally created windswell is pretty much as you’d expect; it is waves that are created by winds blowing over the sea. These winds will have come from a weather system near to, or directly over your beach. These winds will have been blowing over a relatively short distance, say 100-200 miles away from the shore. Despite these short wind-travel distances, these weather systems can still create sizeable waves for surfing.  Waves may reach between 3-6 metres. This sounds ok, but the problem is that the waves are accompanied by the winds that created them.  This means that the surf is ‘blown out’ and messy.

It’s not only annoying to surf in windy conditions; as the waves lose their perfect swell lines (see the photo above for lovely surfable lines), it can be dangerous too. In strong winds it  can be difficult to paddle out, or into a wave. There may be strong currents or rips in the water (more in these topics in a laterseries). And it can be tricky for those learning to surf with heavier or longer surfboards, and for longboarders, to safely control their surfboards in and out of the water.

If you are thinking of surfing and you know it’s a windy day, look for a break which is sheltered from the winds and where the surf is smaller. Although windswell-generated waves lack the power of proper groundswell, you may still have fun surfing a smaller wave of say 1-2 metres in lighter winds.

Wave periods

As well as windswell offering less powerful waves, its major downside for surfers is that it has a shorter wave period (the distance between each wave).  Wave periods are measured in seconds. The longer the better for surfers.

As a general rule, any period over 8 seconds is classed as groundswell and anything less is windswell.

The shorter the wave period the more difficult it will be to surf. This is for a number of reasons.

Shorter wave periods from windswell could mean there will be no channels or rips you could use to take you out, and you will be forced to paddle out directly into the waves. Also it will be harder to paddle out; with less time between each wave to progress ‘out back’,  each wave will push you further back to shore. Also windswell can break up the clean swell lines meaning shorter rides when you do catch a wave.

Groundswell

As mentioned in previous artic$les, groundswell is swell that has moved away from the weather system that created it. As it travels across the ocean it reduces in size to some extent. This reduction depends on the winds and weather it encounters along the way.

Good groundswell can create some legendary surfing locations. For example places like North Peru get winter swell that has travelled from the North Pacific for up to 6-7 days. This means perfect waves on their shores with a wave period of about 15-20 seconds. Another example is Sri Lanka which gets swell from the Southern ocean, travelling up the Indian ocean, resulting in clean swell. The same happens in Bali, but with a reduced swell size, as it has to travel further.

All over the world there are amazing waves to be ridden! You can use your new knowledge of surfing and the weather to pick out some of your own dream destinations!