Todos Santos Island Swell Window

Baja California, Mexico · part of the Todos Santos Island spot guide

Swell window (from): 220°–320° (SW–NW)
Best direction: ~290° (WNW)
Period sweet spot: 16–22 s
Open-ocean height (Hs): 8–26 ft
Resulting faces: 10–40 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 runs from southwest through northwest, with the true sweet spot the west-to-northwest long-period band around 270 to 305° that the canyon focuses. It wants genuinely long period — roughly 16-to-22 seconds — and a documented go-reference is when the offshore Tanner Bank buoy shows around 18-to-20 feet at 20 seconds for an XXL day.

This is a big-wave threshold reef: it fundamentally requires a large, long-period northwest swell to break at size, and the canyon focusing roughly doubles the swell, so the open-ocean height is only a fraction of the face you surf. Read the alert threshold as open-ocean height, deliberately set high.

The storm corridor

Typical swell corridor to Todos Santos Island: North Pacific winter storms sending long-period NW groundswell the canyon focuses onto the reef — Typical swell corridor (schematic straight line): North Pacific winter storms sending long-period NW groundswell the canyon focuses onto the reef.