Holden Beach Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright folks, let’s be straight with each other. This 16-day outlook for Holden Beach is a tough one. There just isn't any surf worth getting excited about. We’re looking at a long stretch of flat, weak conditions, and honestly, for the first week, there's nothing. Nothing. It's the kind of quiet spell where you're better off finding another hobby for a bit.

From Sunday morning (August 30th), it's all tiny, ankle-slapping 1ft waves with a weak 8-second period and thunderstorms around. The energy is a pathetic 24. It doesn’t get any better through Monday and Tuesday. Even when the wind goes glassy on Tuesday morning, the swell is still only 1ft. There's just no power behind anything.

Mid-week gives us a tiny flicker of hope, but nothing you can actually use. On Wednesday (September 2nd), the swell bumps up slightly to 2ft and the period stretches out to 10 seconds, giving the energy a small push into the 100s (110). It’s a sign of life, but the wind is wrong, chopping it up and making it a mess. The rest of the week is a grind, with onshore winds building and making things look worse. By Friday afternoon (September 4th), the wind is honking at 12 mph and the period collapses to 4 seconds – pure wind chop. To be honest, that setup is looking more like a kitesurfing day than a surfing day.

You have to wait until the second week just to find anything you could even call "surfable," and even then, it’s a compromise. Sunday morning (September 6th) offers a 3ft swell, but it's stormy and the period is a terrible 5 seconds. The wind is offshore though, which is a small blessing. That same story repeats on Thursday and Friday mornings (September 10th & 11th) – a 3ft swell with clean conditions from that offshore breeze, but the period is still stuck down at 6 seconds, meaning it'll be soft and crumbly. It's the best of a bad bunch, but it's still pretty poor.

The rest of the period just doesn't offer anything better. The forecast remains consistently poor, with no real swell on the horizon. The last few days are more of the same – small, weak, and windy. There's no standout day, no reason to get your hopes up. It's a long, flat run, but that's just how it goes sometimes around here. The water temp is about normal for the time of year at 83°, so that’s not a factor.

Keep the wax in the shade, check back later, and maybe the long-range models will surprise us. It's not the outlook I wanted to give you, but I'm just calling it as I see it.

Rusty

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