Barra de la Cruz Surf Season
Oaxaca, Mexico · part of the Barra de la Cruz spot guide
Barra runs on the Southern Hemisphere winter. The first south swells arrive in March, April opens the four-to-eight-foot season, and June and July are the most consistent months for size and quality — the 2006 Search was surfed in June. August, the 2021 Championship Tour month, and September stay solid but bring the heaviest afternoon storms and hurricane season; May and October are the sweet spots for lighter crowds. From November to March it is usually one to three feet, dry and quiet.
The water is 26 to 30°C all year — boardshorts always. Summer mornings are glassy or lightly offshore before a south-west sea breeze builds late morning, with storms in the afternoon; from October to February the Tehuano gap winds from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec blow offshore but gusty and can chill the water regionally. Crowds peak from June to August with strike-mission professionals and Californian crews.
Where the swell comes from
Polar lows south of Rapa Nui and east-south-east of Chile are the engine, sending 14-to-18-second south-to-south-south-west groundswell six to seven days across the Pacific; storms that form south of Rapa Nui and send swell sweeping past the Galápagos nearly parallel to the South American coast perform best. Lows that begin near New Zealand arrive as south-west swell after nine or ten days and focus their energy at the top of the point without wrapping as far. Eastern-Pacific tropical cyclones from May to November add short-travel swell, and the winter Tehuano wind-sea is a local extra.
Historic swells at Barra de la Cruz
The Search — four days, done
Reanalysis puts the open-ocean swell at 2.74 m at 16.3 seconds from 199° on 19 June 2006, easing through the window; on the sand it was six-to-eight-foot draining rights for four straight days, and the Rip Curl Pro Search finished within the first four days of its window — a tour first. Andy Irons beat Taylor Knox 16.86–11.33.
Corona Open Mexico
A favourably angled south groundswell from a polar front east-south-east of Chile, with a longer-period south-west swell behind it, gave three days of overhead, flawless surf from 10 to 13 August 2021 — about 2 m of open-ocean swell, 5-to-7-foot faces with sets a couple of feet overhead. Jack Robinson beat Deivid Silva 15.16–15.14 for his first tour win; Stephanie Gilmore took her thirty-second.