Learning how to forecast waves in 10 minutes.
Photo by: Jop Hermans
Being able to forecast how the waves will be the upcoming days is an important part of surfing. When do you go into the water and how do you know if there are good waves? Where can you look up the surf forecasts and what factors should you pay attention to? Let’s dive into it:
Websites
By keeping an eye on the weather forecasts you can predict fairly well whether there will be good waves. This way you avoid being stoked on the beach, but being disappointed because there are no good waves or that you miss out on a very good surf session because you did not know there were waves. You can consult various websites for this.
On windguru.cz you can see the wind speed, wind direction, swell, wave period and wave direction, among other things. Especially with regard to the wind forecast, this website is the most reliable for the Netherlands.
Magicseaweed is comparable to windguru and is therefore also widely used by surfers to view the surfing conditions. Magicseaweed is especially reliable for the swell, but gives a less accurate picture of the wind. The wind can have a great influence on the waves, especially in the Netherlands. That is why Magicseaweed is a useful website if you are going to surf abroad, but windguru gives more accurate predictions for the Netherlands.
Windy is another good source for checking the wind and swell. It’s the features of magicseaweed and windguru in one with a more worldmap view of the forecast. “I only check windy when magicseaweed and windguru are saying something contradicting. That’s when I know that I need a third website to confirm one of the forecasts of the other websites.” - Pepijn
Surf-forecast is one of the forecast websites that’s getting more and more popular in the surfscene. It has a lot of information on it for 7000+ surfspots around the world but the one thing that makes them unique is wave energy. It has a forecast on how much the wave energy will be. “I’m not that experienced with surf-forecast.com but I heard when the wave energy is more than 5000kJ than the waves have really good power..” - Pepijn
Surfline is mostly used outside of Europe and has, next to their forecasts, a variety of really good webcams all over the world. “I mostly switch between magicseaweed and surfline when I’m travelling outside of Europe". - Pepijn
Live surf webcams:
In addition, many surf spots in the Netherlands have live webcams that you can check online to see if there are good waves. It is always good to check the webcam before you leave for the beach, just in case the waves aren’t as good as on the forecast.
What should you pay attention to?
A combination of factors determines whether there is beautiful surf or wether you should stay home. In general, just before a storm comes ashore, there are slightly better and more clean waves, so those are times to keep an eye on the webcam. But you can also surf during the strong wind of the storm, albeit a bit messier. If you check the weather forecast, you can keep an eye out for the following things:
Swell
The most important thing to look at to know if there are good waves is to see if there is swell or not. Swell is the energy that travels through the ocean and falls over at the shore like a (hopefully) surfable wave. There are two types of swells: wind swell and ground swell. Both are generated by wind. However there is a difference:
Windswell is created by a storm nearby. This gives you strong winds, short waves, little period, often messy waves and a lot of wind on land. We often have this type of swell in the Netherlands due to storms that come ashore. Wind swell does create waves, but they are often not the best.
Groundswell, on the other hand, is created by a storm further out on the sea / ocean. In the Netherlands we get groundswell if, for example, a storm enters the Northsea from the Atlantic Ocean via Iceland. This swell often has a higher period, stronger waves and less wind. Unfortunately, this swell is less common in The Netherlands, because we have a small and shallow Northsea and England blocking most the swells from the atlantic ocean.
To know if there is a swell, you could look at websites that show the buoys, but this is a big step in the learning curve of forecasting waves. Websites like Magicseaweed and Windguru also indicate the size of the swell. If you know that there is swell and wind, then you know that you can at least surf.
Wind
A very important part that affects the waves is the wind speed and direction. Windguru.cz provides reliable information about the wind. Let's walk through the windguru.cz website wiith the Dutch coast in mind:
When you open the windguru page on your designated spot, let’s say Scheveningen:
The first two bars indicate the wind speed and the third bar the wind direction.
You will probably see this speed displayed in knots when you open the website. If you click “knots” five times you will see the wind indicated in beaufort. Often when the wind direction is offshore (east wind) and it blows harder than 3 Beaufort, all waves are blown flat.
With strong offshore wind difficult to paddle in, because you paddle against the wind.
If there is swell for Scheveningen, there are often waves from southwest, west, north-west or northeast direction, when you see this on the forecast you know that it is worth checking the webcam to make sure there are waves.
Which wind works well is slightly different for each spot. For example, south-west wind can provide beautiful waves in Scheveningen and the Domburg, but it is worse at a spot such as Wijk aan Zee because there is a long harbour pier there. West wind therefore works better at Wijk aan Zee and almost all spots in the Netherlands because the wind is right onshore.
In general you can say that everything between south-west, west-north-east wind is good for surfing in the Netherlands.
Wave direction
The wave direction also partly determines how the waves will run. To use Scheveningen as an example, the waves can be different with different wave directions.
With south-west wind and south-west swell, this often gives a lot of left-hand waves that arrive at an angle on land. That also means that it doesn't make much sense to surf to the right with this wave direction.
With a wave direction from the north, the waves break to both the left and the right, but will often be more powerful to the right.
With west swell, the waves break well both to the left and to the right because the wave direction is right on the coast.
In the case of northwest swell, the period is often somewhat higher, because the swell can often come from far from the Northsea. Then there are often somewhat higher waves in North Holland than in South Holland.
The direction of the waves also ensures that the waves will break in different places on the sandbanks, so it is good to see where the waves break best before entering the water (see wave selection article).
Wave period
The wave period indicates how many seconds there are between the waves at sea (this can differ when the waves come ashore). A higher period ensures that the waves become slightly larger and more powerful and are slightly aligned better.
There is a sweet spot at each spot at which wave period the waves are just right. This sweet spot differs per surf spot, for example a period of 7/8 seconds in France is super good, but a period of 8 seconds or higher in the Netherlands often causes close outs (waves that break in one go). The sandbanks in the Netherlands can’t have swell with such a high period.
In the Netherlands you don't really have to pay too much attention to the period, you can do this when you are travelling outside of the country. The higher the period, the better the waves. Keep in mind that a swell with a high period can cause the waves to become a lot higher than the swell indicates. For example, the waves with a period of 20 seconds and a 1 meter swell can be two meters or higher.
Tides
Finally, the tide plays a major role in how the waves break at a surf spot. This has to do with the waves breaking on the sandbanks or reef in a different way with high tide, mid tide and low tide.
For example, the waves in Scheveningen are mostly crumbly at low tide and you get different types of waves at high tide. But how the waves break with high and low tide can also change because sandbanks are always shifting due to the waves pushing the sand around. For example, the sandbanks can suddenly be different after a very big storm than before and the surf can be better for a certain period with high tide, but after a hard storm it gets good again with low tide.
To get a feel for this is a matter of experience, so surf a lot and experience what the waves do at what tide. Often when you go to a new spot it is also useful to watch the waves at low tide, rising tide, high tide and outgoing tide, to have a complete picture of how the waves break and what is best. You can then make a mental note of this or even keep a log, to map out which circumstances work well in a spot.
Best practices:
All in all, there are different circumstances that together determine whether there will be good waves. Being able to properly estimate when there are good waves is a matter of finding out a lot, and always looking at which swell, with which tide, with which wind and with what period the waves break well on a spot. These are my three best tips for learning to predict properly:
Check the predictions every day, even if you are not going to surf and make a prediction before checking the webcam. This way you can see if you are completely wrong or close with your personal forecast. Ask yourself why the waves are the way they are and adjust your forecast for the next time you’re checking.
Make a personal forecast before checking the waves on the beach.
Write down in a logbook / note when there are good waves somewhere. Write down the spot, tide, wind direction, wind speed, wave direction, wave heigh, period and how the waves were, a rating out of 5 for example.
By making a log with your own forecasts, you ensure that you do not have to doubt whether it will be surfable under the same conditions and you know that it may not be worthwhile to drive to the sea with other conditions. From now on you know exactly how to predict waves.
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