Hornitos Surf Forecast and Surf Report

Alright folks, Rusty here. Let’s talk about what’s on the menu for Hornitos over the next couple of weeks. It’s a bit of a slow burn, but there’s a real window of quality waiting for us out there, so don’t sleep on it.

Right off the bat, the water is running about 5°F warmer than usual for this time of year, which is a nice little bonus. The first few days are pretty lackluster. We’ve got some small SW swell, but wave heights are barely scraping 3ft, and while the mornings are glassy, the afternoons get chopped up by onshore breezes. Tuesday and Wednesday will be for the patient, not the hungry. The energy is weak, with values around 240 to 358, and it’s just not doing much.

There’s a gap of a few days with very little on offer, where the surf just sort of flatlines into the weekend. We go through a stretch where the swell drops off completely and the energy readings plummet to 67 and 100. It’s a quiet patch, that’s for sure. You’d be better off doing some maintenance on your board than paddling out for those ankle-biters.

Things start to shuffle back to life next week. By Monday the 22nd, we see that SW swell nudging back up to 3ft, but the wind is still on it in the afternoons, so you’ve got to be a dawn patrol warrior to get anything clean. A few mornings in there, like the 25th, have the period stretching out to 11 seconds and the energy starting to build – we’re talking 253 – with that light morning glass.

Now, for the real standout. The window we’re all waiting for is the morning of Saturday the 26th. That’s when it all clicks. We’ve got a 4ft SW swell hitting with an 11 second period, and the energy jumps to 618. The wind is dead calm, making for perfect, glassy conditions. This is what we’ve been waiting for.

And it gets better. The morning of Sunday the 27th is the absolute pick of the fortnight. The swell pushes up to 5ft, the period stretches to a solid 12 seconds, and the energy is cranking at 862. It’s got that long-period push that will wrap nicely into Hornitos, which is fairly exposed to that SW groundswell. With the offshore NW breeze cleaning it up, this is going to be proper. This is the one to circle in the calendar. This is a solid intermediate wave, but at 5ft it’s pushing a bit more size, so keep your wits about you.

The energy is strong, but it’s not insane—just good, powerful surf. We’ll see a drop-off after that, but there’s another little pulse on the 28th and into the first days of October, but the wind gets a bit messy, so those mornings will be your best bet. It’s not going to be as clean as that Sunday, but there will be waves.

So, in short: the next week is slow, but hold out. The morning of the 26th is good, but the morning of the 27th is the day. Make the call, wax up, and get out there when the sun’s up and the ocean looks like a pond.

Rusty.

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