Cogumelo Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright, folks, Rusty here. Let's be straight with you about the waves ahead. It’s gonna be a bit of a test of patience, a real tale of two weeks. The first week is nothing but frustration, and then we get a pulse of real energy from the deep blue that could make things very interesting, but you gotta know where to be.

Right now, up at Cogumelo, we’re staring down a stretch of poor conditions. The water's sitting at 67.6°, which is a bit colder than we'd expect for this time of year, so you'll want the rubber. For the next several days, we're looking at a lot of cross and cross-onshore winds, choppy surf, and weak energy readings mostly under 200. The swell is there, but it’s mostly short-period and disorganized, not enough to do anything with. Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 9th are write-offs. The wave energy is feeble (32, then 78), and the wind is messing up whatever small surf there is. Monday the 10th pushes a little more energy (118) but it’s still all over the place.

Mid-week, from the 11th to the 13th, the energy starts to climb—we see readings in the 120s, 150s, even 176—but the wind remains a constant problem from the NW, keeping the surface lumpy. There's a bit of a jump in size on the 14th and 15th, with the swell getting up to 4.9ft to 5.2ft, and the energy is strong (457, 296, 326), but the period is still short and the wind is just too on it. This is a case of more swell, same messy result. It looks tempting but it's a trap. It's all still poor surf.

Then, something shifts. After Tuesday the 18th, the swell bottoms out completely. Wednesday the 19th and Thursday the 20th are totally flat and dead. Energy readings drop to almost nothing (27, 26, 47). It’s a total blank. You can hang up the wetsuit for a few days there.

But hold on to your boards, because there's light at the end of the tunnel. On Friday the 21st, a week from this coming Friday, the ocean wakes up. We’ve got a proper pulse of NW groundswell moving in. The energy readings are massive, hitting 659 and 872. Swell heights are up around 6.2ft to 7.2ft, and the period stretches to 10 seconds. It’s still not perfect—the wind is onshore—but for the first time, there’s some real power in the water. This one is for the experienced crew. With size like that, it’s definitely too big for beginners, and at 7.2ft, only experts should be looking at it.

The 22nd and 23rd see the swell stick around at 5.9ft with energy still in the 300-500 range, but the wind is cranking from the NW, blowing 30-35 km/h. That’s going to make it lumpy and challenging. For the size and the conditions, this setup at a beach break could honestly be more interesting for the kite surfers than for paddle surfers. It's going to be a handful.

So, here's the takeaway. The first week you should probably do something else. It’s a long, flat, and sloppy stretch. The standout is absolutely that swell arriving on the 21st. It’s a long-range promise, so take it with a grain of salt, but the energy is there and it’s the only time in the window that the ocean will really wake up. It'll be big, powerful, and for experts only. A word of caution: this long-period groundswell (9-10 seconds) can sometimes break too straight at beach breaks, so keep your eyes open.

Stay patient.

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