Blacks Beach Swell Window
California, USA · part of the Blacks Beach spot guide
- Swell window (from)
- 210°–310° (SSW–NW)
- Best direction
- ~285° (WNW)
- Period sweet spot
- 13–18 s
- Open-ocean height (Hs)
- 2–8 ft
- Resulting faces
- 2–15 ft
Open-ocean vs. the face: the heights on buoys and forecast models are significant wave height (Hs) in deep water. What you ride is the breaking face, which depends on period, direction and this break's bathymetry — that's why the two rows above differ. PierMonkey's spot ratings already do this conversion for you.
The window is deliberately broad — roughly 210° to 310° — because the canyons refract both the winter west-northwest band and the summer south band toward the beach. The classic setup is a west-northwest groundswell around 270–300° with an offshore east wind; long period, 13 to 20 seconds, is where the focusing and hollow shape peak.
Because Blacks locally focuses energy, the breaking face at the good peaks runs materially larger than a straight conversion of the buoy height — that gap between the buoy reading and the wave you paddle for is the canyon story. Adjacent, un-focused stretches of the same beach can be half the size on the same day.