Cox Bay (Tofino) Swell Window
British Columbia, Canada · part of the Cox Bay (Tofino) spot guide
- Swell window (from)
- 180°–300° (S–WNW)
- Best direction
- ~260° (W)
- Period sweet spot
- 10–16 s
- Open-ocean height (Hs)
- 3–14 ft
- Resulting faces
- 2–12 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 south-southwest through west to west-northwest, and the beach is genuinely open to that wide band. West around 250 to 270° is the money angle straight into the bay; northwest is the dominant fall-and-winter groundswell direction that the headlands refract in, and southwest also delivers on clean long-period pulses. Period around 10-to-16 seconds gives organised surf, with long-period pulses cleanest when the winds cooperate.
The beach filters and closes out much of the raw offshore energy, so the breaking face runs smaller than the buoy height — a given buoy reading produces a noticeably smaller face here. Read the two as separate numbers.