Arugam Bay Alert Guide
Eastern Province, Sri Lanka · part of the Arugam Bay spot guide
Arugam Bay is forecast-only — the nearest buoy is about a thousand kilometres away — so the alert is a model-swell alert, and the height below is an open-ocean reading that the wrap keeps larger than the face.
The forecaster's checklist
- 1.Find the Southern Ocean source — a Roaring Forties storm sending swell north.
- 2.Confirm the wrap: south-to-southeast energy at 12 seconds and up.
- 3.Confirm the offshore window — May through September, offshore early and onshore by midday, so plan a dawn session.
- 4.Give it three to five days of travel on the global models; there is no near buoy.
- 5.The tell is a long-period south-to-southeast line inside the 80–200° window during a dry southwest-monsoon morning.
Local winds & tide
Best wind: W–NNW offshore (the SW-monsoon dawn window) — from 290° to 340° (WNW–NNW).
Micro-tidal — the tidal range is well under a metre, so it works across the tide with only a slight preference for covering the inside rocks. No tide series is modelled.
Dial it in
The dial-up: alert settings that catch it
When ALL of these line up in the 5-day forecast window, this spot is turning on.
- Open-ocean swell height
- ≥ 3 ft
- Swell period
- ≥ 12 s
- Swell direction (from)
- 80°–200° (E–SSW)
- Wind direction (from)
- 290°–340° (WNW–NNW)
No representative buoy on this coast — read these numbers against the 16-day spot forecast instead.