Wave Knowledge

Like I talked about in another post about swells and how they’re formed, without wind there would be no waves. And you’ve probably heard the terms onshore winds and offshore winds thrown around, but don’t fully understand what they mean. On the surface, it seems simple enough: If the wind is onshore, it’s blowing from…

Wave period, swell period, interval—they all mean the same thing, and understanding this number is key to reading a surf forecast. That’s because so much of surfing is based on physics: wind velocity, wind direction, swell energy, and of course, surfing itself. The wave period is the magic number that ties it all together into…

As surfers, we refer to water in a lot of ways: ocean, sea, surf, swell, waves, not to mention the different types of waves we like to ride (lefts, rights, A-frames). And though we tend to talk about swell and waves interchangeably, there’s a subtle difference between the two terms when it comes to the…

Big waves, small waves, hollow waves, mushy waves, smooth waves, crumbly waves… no two waves are exactly the same, and that’s what makes surfing so challenging (and exciting!). A lot of variables are involved in the physics of how a wave forms: swell intervals and intensity, wind knots and what direction the wind is blowing,…

Have you ever watched surfers from the beach and thought, “Wow, they make it look so easy” when they know exactly when to start paddling to catch that perfect peeler, or “Why didn’t they go for that wave?” when the sets keep passing them by. For many people, it’s easy to think that surfing merely…

To the average person, a wave just looks like a wall of water that crashes continually, one after another. But to a surfer, every part of the wave has a purpose, whether it’s for generating momentum, making turns, launching airs, or even making an exit out of the wave. Knowing how to choose a wave…