Another fun south swell

The Setup

20260111 GFS

Courtesy of tropicaltidbits.com (with red arrow added by me)

We can almost call this chart “the usual” at this point. We have a region of low pressure over the Great Lakes and an area of high pressure over the central Atlantic. They are interacting and creating a wind fetch that is mostly southwest in direction, but there is a period of time where that fetch is pretty 180 degrees true south. This sets up some short period wind swell with heights in the 5ft range that should wrap into our area with favorable shape.

The Waves

20260111 Gif

Given how much the models have struggled with this swell, I’m pretty reticent to give a detailed breaking wave height forecast. In general, most of the model runs have put swell heights (what you’d see on the buoy) between 4.5 and 6 feet. Based on that, I’m pretty confident that we’ll see widespread breaking wave heights in the stomach to chest high range with occasional shoulder high sets, especially at better sandbars/Ocean County.

As far as conditions go, everything is looking pretty favorable. We have a 7:20am low tide at 0.7ft which aligns pretty closely with sunrise. Because this isn’t a negative low tide, it shouldn’t cause to many issues at most breaks and I’m not expecting it to look to drained for the dawn patrol session. Wind is light offshore to start the morning before getting stronger late-AM into the afternoon. It doesn’t look like the wind every gets too unmanageable (~15kts), but I would plan on surfing during the morning rather than after 12pm, when stronger gusts are expected.

Like other steep south swells we’ve had, I’d expect the waves to feel softer than 5+ft@8s would suggest. I’d plan on bringing a daily driver type board at most and a groveler or longboard as a backup. It’s still possible waves come in a bit smaller than expected.

Looking Ahead

We have a high probability of seeing weak, but doable, surf on Wednesday 1/14. After that, we have to watch what happens late week as a potentially stronger coastal low moves through our region. This is the next chance for firing surf, but is at this time, a low probability event.