How Our WaveFinder Tool Makes Forecasting Easier Than Ever Before
With more than 7000 spots logged around the world, our WaveFinder and Written Summaries are forecast and mapping tools that help you get the best of all our incredible data.
The WaveFinder
The WaveFinder tool is the map located below our swell, wind and energy table on the website and app. The black arrows show the wind speed and angle, while the blue icons give the swell size and direction. You can zoom in to focus on a few miles of any coastline, or zoom out to cover whole continents.
The slider bar at the bottom of the map shows how the surf conditions change over time. Our premium members get to look 16 days ahead. When a surf spot’s forecast looks good, it is given a star rating out of 10. This flags the best waves or conditions on the stretch you’re looking at.
That can be especially useful when you travel to spots that you aren’t 100% down with. Say you are hitting Peniche, in Portugal. That’s a town located on a peninsula, with a large variety of beaches and reefs. Some surf spots face south; others have a northerly aspect. While the wind and Atlantic Ocean swell will be from the same direction everywhere on that part of the coast, different spots will vary wildly in wave size, energy and quality.
On a given day, Supertubos could be 10 feet and onshore, while Baleal, less than a few miles north, will be three foot, fun and offshore. On the WaveFinder, you can zoom out, see what the spots are doing in terms of swell and wind direction, and the star rating will guide you to the best waves. That process can be replicated 10 miles either way or for the entire length of the Portuguese coast.
It’s a powerful, visual tool that takes out much of the guesswork of surf forecasting, no matter where you are in the world.
New Written Forecast Summaries: A spoon-fed, spun-gold, 16-day written report updated daily.
Sometimes you just need to be told, in words, exactly what is going to happen. Our premium users receive a written forecast summary for the next 16 days. This is like being spoon-fed a spun-gold written forecast. The summaries appear above the swell and wind charts, though you can elect to hide them if you prefer the graphic chart. It highlights exactly when the best conditions will be for individual spots on exact dates, and also gives a general vibe-based forecast for the next two weeks. The reports are updated every day and are one of the best, localised, bite-sized and specialised surf forecasts you can get anywhere.
Combo It Up For Your Own Surf Data Supercomputer
Between the Wave Finder and our detailed surf forecast reports, we have handed you the keys to the ultimate surf data supercomputer. You can sift through the complicated matrix to get a simple read, either graphically or in written form, to get the best waves at your local beach, or for whole chunks of coastline.
