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by Jeep Hardinge
Author Jeep Hardinge has been surfing Baja longer than he
cares to mention. Surfer, artist and student of the ocean, Jeep moved to
Baja California Sur a few years ago and makes a regular habit of catching
a wave. Here are his tips and resources for knowing when the surf is up in
Baja California.
As Summer approaches and with it the potential for
Southern Hemisphere storms that produce significant waves in the Cape
Region, let’s discuss how to keep track of what is going on and how to
know when and where the best surf will be.
Look at a map of the Pacific Ocean and you will see that
the Peninsula of Baja California is a unique piece of geography. Baja
juts out into the Pacific and is exposed to storm generated swells that
can come from the North Pacific in our winter and the South Pacific in
their winter. The swell window for the Cape Region of Baja extends from
approximately 300 degrees (Northwest) in winter all the way around the
compass through South to approximately 130 degrees (Southeast) in summer.
This is a huge area of ocean that extends all the way south to the icepack
of Antarctica. Fortunately for surfers in the computer age there are many
resources to keep track of weather all through the Pacific.
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What I find most informative are the charts showing the
Wave Models. Theses charts are paired showing wave height and period
(the interval between the swells). The Period Chart can be
interpreted like a normal weather chart, but here you are looking at the
“fronts” of energy passing through the Pacific rather than the “fronts” of
air pressure and direction that show on a regular weather chart.
These wave fronts are presented in animation as well. You can watch
the approach of a wave front as it moves away from the storm that
generated it.
Wetsand.com is the least informative, but they give an easy to read graph
of the major swell showing its height and the direction from which it
comes.
The direction of the swell is a key piece of information.
Again, look at a map or visualize the rounded end of the peninsula, the
Cape region. As the Cape gently curves, the many rocky points
allow the swell to present itself in many different settings and across
different bottoms. You can drive along the coast until you find a
point that is producing a wave just the way you like it. As you
become familiar with the terrain, you learn the optimum direction for each
area and then you can keep track of incoming swells and do your own surf
forecasting. The East Cape offers countless
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Baja California Sur from space
Surfline.com has developed its own wave forecast model that they call
LOLA. They require a paid membership to access this model. LOLA is a
very good model and is a different source than the models on Stormsurf.com
which come from NOAA Surfline.com offers a 30 day free trial for the
Premium Membership.
Let me list a few sites that I find most helpful:
Stormsurf.com
Surfline.com
Wetsand.com
LosCabosInsider.com
I use these sites in combination to obtain a variety of
data and interpretation. I believe LosCabosInsider.com is the single best
site to watch weather in the Cape Region. When the tropical season is
active, LosCabosInsider.com has gone out of their way to provide all the
information possible in their Weather Pages. The other sites provide
information for the greater Pacific Ocean.
Go to Stormsurf.com. There you will find numerous pages
of information, surf reports and surf forecasts. The Pacific Forecast
gives you probably more details than you want, but they track each storm
from its origin to its demise and interpret how it will affect the surf.
The Pacific Quick cast is an abridged version of the Forecast. The
Chartroom is where they show weather charts, satellite photos and animated
forecast charts. I find that if you look at Surf Reports rather than Surf
Forecasts in the Chartroom you get the most information.
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breaks, each reacting differently as the swell comes from different
directions. A swell generated by a storm below New Zealand coming
from approx. 200 degrees will break in the Corridor and out the East Cape
near Shipwrecks and 9 Palms. A swell coming from the Antarctic below
Chile will come from approx. 130 degrees and may break as far around the
Cape as Cabo Pulmo. And there are dozens of breaks that
will pick up the same swell and create a variety of waves.
The same principle applies to the Pacific side of the Cape
in the winter. The key factor for the Pacific side is that for a swell to
get to Southern Baja directly it must come from west of 300 degrees. Such
a storm would be located west of the International Dateline and
optimally just off the coast of northern Asia around the Kamchatka
Peninsula. When swells are generated east of the Dateline in the Gulf of
Alaska the swell is blocked by the western most part of the North American
Continent, the area that is Oregon and Northern California. Swells do
refract or wrap around landmasses, but it takes a very strong swell to
wrap far enough around North America to make it to Baja Sur. A map will
show that Cabo San Lucas is on a line connecting Denver and Albuquerque
and thus far east of true north. Thus a swell has to come from the
northwest to affect Baja Sur.
 In summer, the wildcard is tropical weather. There can be
a dozen or more tropical systems that originate in the Eastern Pacific
along the Mexican coast each summer between June and November. Often
they move quickly to the west along 10 North latitude and are not noticed
in Baja. But sometimes they form near Acapulco and come north along the
coast. If such a storm stalls, it can generate a swell that produces
waves in Baja. The key factors are how far away the storm is from the
Cape, how long it stalls, how strong the winds are and how local weather
conditions interfere with the waves. Tropical systems, or chubascos,
often come ashore in the Cape Region. Then there are waves, but storm
conditions make it unsurfable.
If you are in a position to get up and come to Baja at the
approach of a swell, you can, in this day and age, keep track of what is
going on from anywhere in the world. The Stormsurf.com site gives one
more helpful piece of information. When a significant swell is generated,
they give it a number, #1S for the first Southern Hemi swell and so on and
#1N for the first winter swell from the north. This helps you to
recognize when there is the potential for really good waves. And you
don’t have to guess when the surf’s up!
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