Mundaka Alert Guide

Basque Country, Spain · part of the Mundaka spot guide

Mundaka is forecast-only — the nearest buoy is hundreds of kilometres away — so the alert fires on the model, and you confirm the two things the model can’t see: whether the sandbar is built and whether the tide is right. The height below is an open-ocean reading, not the face.

The forecaster's checklist

1. 1.Find a North Atlantic low throwing a west-northwest to northwest fetch into Biscay.
2. 2.Confirm roughly 2 to 3 m of significant height at 13 to 16 seconds from about 300–320° on the models, ground-truthed on the Bilbao / Bizkaia buoy and the Basque Euskoos network.
3. 3.Give it two to four days of lead on the models; the buoy is your hours-out truth.
4. 4.Read the classic Mundaka tell as all four at once: a solid northwest groundswell, a built-up sandbar, a low-to-mid filling tide, and a light south-to-southeast offshore.
5. 5.Respect the sand wildcard — the one thing no model shows. After dry spells, low river flow or dredging the bank can be flat under a great swell, so check a recent cam before you commit.

Local winds & tide

Best wind: S–SE offshore grooms the NW-facing bar (dawn glass is classic) — from 135° to 200° (SE–SSW).

Mundaka is among the most tide-sensitive waves anywhere, even though no tide series is modelled here: it is best on the lower half of the tide, low-to-mid and ideally filling, while a high tide fattens and can switch it off entirely within an hour or two.

Dial it in