About Surf Height
Know the motion of the ocean.
Surf forecasts for 115 spots around the world, made from NOAA's global wave model: how big the waves will be when they break, how good they'll be, and what the tide is doing. Free, with no account needed.
- Surf spots
- 115
- Countries
- 10
- Days of surf
- 7
- Days of tides
- 28
Latest model run:
How it works
From the open ocean to the beach
Every hour of every forecast goes through the same three steps, for every spot, every day.
- Waves out at sea
NOAA's GFS-Wave model forecasts wind waves and swell on a grid of points about 15 miles apart. Surf Height reads each day's run at the point nearest every spot, moved out to sea where that point would sit on land.
- Breaking at the shore
The Komar and Gaughan formula works out how big the wind waves and each swell are when they break. Swell heading straight at the beach arrives in full, swell at an angle arrives smaller, and the lot adds up as wave energy.
- A rating from 1 to 5
The breaking height and swell period set the rating, scaled for the kind of break. Then the swell direction and the wind move it up or down, hour by hour.
In every report
Everything you check before a surf
- Spots set by hand
- 115 spots in 10 countries. The direction each beach faces comes from the OpenStreetMap coastline, and points, reefs, coves and lagoons are set by hand, with their best swell direction and kind of break where we know them.
- Suggest a spot
- The surf map
- Waves, swell and wind across the world from the same model run, every 3 hours for 3 days and every 6 after that. The moving lines show where it is all heading, and speed up for longer-period waves and stronger wind.
- Open the surf map
- Live buoys
- Wave height, period and direction from NOAA buoys, and wind, pressure and temperature from coastal stations, updated every hour. Every report links to the nearest wave buoy.
- Water and weather
- Wind and gusts, air and water temperature, and the wetsuit to wear, beside the surf for every hour of the week.
Snow Height
The height of snow
Surf Height's sister site, with snow forecasts made the same way.
Visit Snow Height