not a beginner, I've been surfing most of my life I just check the swell and grab my board. Ive just been getting curious with winds.
Ok Mattnjsurf, forgive me for assuming you are a beginner. I've gotta say -at the risk of sounding like a d*ck- I'm surprised that you could be surfing for very long on the east coast without understanding the role that winds play in surf conditions. Because we live on the leeward side of the continent, our surf doesn't come from far-traveling groundswells like the pacific coast. The majority of our surfable days are the result of local weather events. It's for this reason that most east coast surfers end up learning a lot about weather just out of necessity. I know when I was younger and didn't know what was going on with the weather, I used to get skunked very often. I mean even now with the weather apps on your iphone, and with swellinfo models to help out, you still gotta understand this stuff.. there are a lotta days in the late spring/summer/early fall when the forecast says the wind is gonna be light offshore all day, and swellinfo has the little green man, but we know from experience that as soon as the land warms up enough, that onshore wind's gonna start cranking and junk it up.
Offshores are good and all but you can get great surf on light onshore / sideshore too, I say anything under 10 in any direction is a good thing, once it gets over 10 you really want offshores or a side shore / offshore mix. I've found that too much offshore is a bad thing too, that starts at about 20 knot. Honestly though, i'd prefer dead calm over all of it.
Weathermaang and Bubonic were a help to me, I know the basics of my winds but they both definitely opened my eyes a bit. From now on if a newbie asks for wind help, I'll point em to this thread... Another thing about wind, you gotta be really careful with 20+ knot/mph/whatever wind.. even if it is a perfect offshour, you'll get water blown into your face and it will be really tough to surf without getting blown off your board/off the wave.
Cool that makes me happy. General rule of thumb. Think about what a lump of water coming in looks like.....then imagine what the wind direction will do to that. Its an exact science but it is also the furthest thing from. When looking for waves use your experience and intuition to find them. Also on a windy day if a lot of people are out at one spot it is probably for a reason.
