Mainland Mexico might be the call. Shea Lopez in classic form. Photo: AnthonyGhiglia.com
No one wants to get skunked on a surf trip. Surfers calculate and plan out their trips during seasons that they believe will give them the best chances of getting waves. But right now we’re in the midst of a strong El Niño event. How does that affect those calculations of the best areas to score surf?
The effects that El Niño has on the North Pacific – surf hotspots like Hawaii and California – is well-documented. Most avid California surfers with an internet connection can tell you that during El Niño years we tend to get stronger, more frequent swells coming from a more westerly direction. But what about the rest of the world? El Niño refers to the warming up of water along the equatorial Pacific, but its effects are global – certainly far beyond Hawaii and California. No matter where you plan on going in the world, El Niño can have an impact.
To get a better understanding of El Niño’s global effects – particularly how to score waves during this period – I called up Surfline Director of Forecasting Kevin Wallis. Wallis, who has more than two decades of experience and was with the site when it still had a phone service, gave us the breakdown of things to factor into your surf trip plans. He also was kind enough to drop a few recommendations for this strong El Niño we’re currently experiencing.
There’s so much information online about how El Niño affects places like California and Hawaii – more storm activity, the jet stream drops, etc. But there’s not a lot of information about the rest of the world. Globally speaking, what other effects do we see?
The surf impacts are more well known for Hawaii and California, but you can extrapolate that out a little bit to a couple other spots that may not immediately come to mind to most people – spot that can get pretty good during El Niño years.
I’ll preface this by saying that no two El Niños are the same. And we don’t necessarily see significant impacts with every El Niño. But where we do tend to see the most significant impacts is when we’ve got strong or very strong El Niños, which is what we’re in this year. One of the strongest signals we see for enhanced surf is in the North Pacific – California or Southern California, especially. In northern California, a lot of times it gets stormy. And in Hawaii, we will tend to see enhanced surf, but if you move away from that, there’s a lot more places scattered throughout the eastern end of the Pacific basin that are either west or northwest facing and would benefit from the same swells that California and Hawaii would.
So if you just start going a little bit further south from California, there are some great spots in southern Baja, like the south facing points that traditionally wouldn’t get that great on a normal northwest winter swell. But if we’ve got stronger swells that are more westerly in direction, more of that energy will get into those points. So they can actually get pretty good on some of these El Niño types of years and storms. And then even the west facing spots. When you get up around the corner from the Cabo area towards Todos Santos, it’s west facing and there are some beachbreaks that can get good on winter swells.
Heading further south, think about the spots in mainland Mexico that are west or northwest facing, those areas around Mazatlan and even all the way into the Banderas Bay. Again, a lot of times during your traditional northwest swells a lot of that energy will be blocked and pass by. But if you’ve got a stronger and more westerly swell, more of that energy can get in. It’s the same deal with Southern California where we’ll be generally very small compared to Northern California if there’s a lot of north in the swell. But as we get more and more west, it just takes less energy to get in and produce surf. And that’s the same deal as you head to the south – good spots from northern Mexico through Central America, like the Guanacaste region in Costa Rica. Even further south into South America, I think about how Ecuador, the Galapagos, and northern Peru can get outstanding. If there’s an ‘Eddie’ type swell in Hawaii, roughly a week later is when Central American spots are going to light up. And then another day or two after that, depending on the exact direction, it will get down into South America.
How does El Niño affect the storm activity in the South Pacific?
In the South Pacific, when we are starting to see this El Niño really strengthen, what we tend to see is – and this would be more going back towards our last northern hemisphere summer – a storm track that favors swell for the Americas, versus the Southwest Pacific. That’s exactly what we saw last summer. The biggest storms, the strongest storms, were all in the central and eastern South Pacific. So we had big, and at times, really good surf through the Puerto Escondido area. All of May and into June was really good. And then any of the spots in Central America that prefer more of a south versus a southwest swell will tend to be better. On the opposite side of the Pacific, over in Tahiti especially, Fiji somewhat, it tends to be slower during El Niño years. That’s what happened. There was a good swell for Tahiti in the beginning of the season in late April. After that it was pretty slow.
What causes the storms to form more towards the east of the South Pacific basin, as opposed to the west?
In this case, you get high pressure that develops in the western or the southwest Pacific. That prevents storms from forming there, which would produce surf for, say, the Tahiti area. But that high, depending on where it’s placed, can also really enhance the fetch of the storms that are in the central or eastern South Pacific. The high can be just as important as the storm itself for developing consistent surf.
The Punta Borinquen area of Puerto Rico anyone? Photo: Francisco Javier Gil
What about the Atlantic Ocean?
If I was going to go on a surf trip anywhere, one of my top spots around January and February this year would be in the Caribbean. Again, with that more southerly storm track, you see a lot of storms that will move through the southern U.S., through the Gulf of Mexico, and come out in the Atlantic off of Florida. Florida actually can get really good surf during El Niño years in the winter, with some great north swells.
Those same storms are fairly close, but not so close that they’re setting up stormy conditions into the Caribbean. So you get a combination of stronger northwest and north swells. A lot of times those same storms will be enough to disrupt the trade winds through the Caribbean. Look at a spot like Puerto Rico that has pretty consistent trade winds, similar to what you’d see in Hawaii, where it’s blowing out of the east or northeast probably 300 days a year. That can really help to open up a lot of spots. Northwest Puerto Rico is protected from those trade winds but as you move up to north and northeast Puerto Rico, it’s much more exposed. If that storm track is far enough south and can help erode the high that sets up the trades, you get a lot of days with light wind. You’ve got swell and generally cleaner, better conditions. I’m using Puerto Rico as an example, but that goes for a lot of different Caribbean islands, too. Some of those spots are a little more rare and need more west in the direction to really light up. You tend to see that more often during El Niño years than ENSO neutral or La Niña years.
Do those storms keep going across the Atlantic and send waves to Europe?
Yeah they will. One thing we tend to see a lot during El Niño in Western Europe is when you’ve got surf, you’ve got a lot of onshore wind, with those storms potentially impacting further south like Portugal and Spain. Those places get hit by storms a lot anyway, but typically speaking, during El Niños, the conditions generally aren’t as good as what you might see during La Niña or ENSO neutral years. The signal there isn’t as strong as some of the other places, like what we’ve got in the North Pacific, but Western Europe in general would be lower on my personal list of places to travel to during El Niño winters.
How about the Indian Ocean? Places like Indonesia.
During moderate to strong or very strong El Niños in the Indian Ocean – again, this goes back more towards this last swell season there, so roughly April through September – you tend to see stronger than normal wind. So for the Bali area it’d be stronger than normal trades, which isn’t too big a deal if you’re surfing the Bukit Peninsula. Those areas that are more protected will be clean. But as you move further north/northwest in the Indonesian chain, as you get up to the Mentawais, you tend to see stronger than normal southerly wind, which does impact the surf quality quite a bit. There are just not nearly as many spots that can handle that southerly wind compared to the more typical pattern, which is light, variable swirling wind. Normally you’ve got spots to turn on and turn off as the wind swivels around, but with the stronger than normal southerly winds, a lot of spots are just blown out and chunky all day. Some other spots are at least somewhat protected and clean, but it really narrows your options for quality surf.
Would it be similar for other Indian Ocean spots like the Maldives or Sri Lanka?
That’s a good question. For that zone, when you think about the Maldives, they generally do better during La Niña years in terms of swell production. We do see that the high that kicks up southeasterly trades, which is the bread and butter for swell production in the Maldives especially, tends to be better in La Niña years.
Ok what about the Atlantic? South Africa?
I will admit to not knowing if there is or isn’t a strong signal there. It’s kind of an unknown, as far as the exact swell impacts.
Is that because surf in the South Atlantic isn’t studied enough? Or are the effects just more complicated?
Probably a little bit of both. I think it’s like the different El Niños that we have at home (California). For a long time everyone thought El Niño meant getting a bunch of rain and big surf. But we’ve figured out that’s not necessarily the case. It does improve our chances for surf, especially with moderate to strong El Niños. But on the precipitation side, it will be all over the map. If you look back at 2015-2016, which I think is really a pretty good analog year for this El Niño, we did have great surf, but in Southern California especially, we barely got any waves. It really was dry. So I think we’re still figuring out some of these areas and the exact impact. I’ll also freely admit that my specific knowledge of the South Atlantic storm track, and especially during the different phases of ENSO, is not nearly as high as it is for the North Pacific, which is what I’m looking at day in and day out.
Mr. Wallis was kind enough to drop some serious knowledge for readers of The Inertia. Photo: Surfline
Makes sense. And what about tropical storms? From what I understand, an El Niño might lead to more activity in the East Pacific and less in the Atlantic?
Yeah, that tends to be the case. Around Baja California, and mainland Mexico to an extent, we tend to see more frequent and stronger hurricanes, which generally means more frequent and stronger surf. In the western Atlantic, you tend to see less tropical activity. Although this last year was a pretty good example of bucking the trend a little bit. We had a bunch of storms throughout the year, a pretty active tropical season. That’s as active a season as I’ve seen for a moderate, and especially strong, El Niño.
Let’s talk about the western Pacific.
You tend to see pretty good storms as well. It’s roughly about average, to slightly above average, for the frequency and the strength of storms. One thing that we do notice during a lot of El Niños is that the track tends to be a little different. You get what we sometimes call “homegrown” storms, meaning they’ll develop right off the coast of say, the Philippines, versus forming well out to the east and then taking a longer track towards the Philippines, eventually recurving and moving up past Japan and into the North Pacific. We see a lot more of those local storms that pop up versus the long track ones.
I see online that there’s a 60 percent chance we’re gonna get to ENSO neutral between April and June. How would that change the equation?
I would say your best odds to score surf would be to take advantage of what the North Pacific dishes out over the next, roughly, two to two and a half months. Get into one of those west or northwest facing spots somewhere from roughly Hawaii east. And think further south, too. Another great spot to go to on those northwest swells would be Tahiti or Tuamotus. That’s going to be the strongest signal to give you the highest odds to get waves. And that could be anything from really big surf in Hawaii, or potentially California if you’re looking for more medium size surf. You can also head further south a little further away from the source. (The North Pacific) is going to give you your best odds for scoring surf over probably the next six months.
