Education on why cold fronts mean good waves in Texas...

First - thanks to everyone who weighed in with answers to this Tex-Newbie on the dynamics of hurricane surf a couple months ago. I forward sent some of your surf pics from Gustav to buds in Cali - looked like San O' on a really fun day - with much less crowd.

I see where there are chats and posts about winter/cold front surf; can some of you vets explain those dynamics to me? Is it, that because as a front approaches, it means increasingly strong onshore winds, which create a wave fetch and then "pow" the front goes through and you have a window where offshore winds groom up the formerly whipped up surf? How long does the surf tend to last before the offshores blow the surf flat?

That and ANY other good insight, advice on what to look for, or where and when to be for winter surf, would be greatly appreciated.

Mahalo !

Yep, that about describes it...trick is to be on it when it's on!

you have the basics.

onshore wind, builds the surf

front comes thru

can line up with offshore winds.


billions of variables as to how good, how long the swell lasts..
even the best weathermen cant give an accurate reading..
you just gotta watch it.

certainly a larger swell from onshore winds will hold up longer than a smaller one.

and often , the offshore wind is tooo strong for tooo long it will blow the surf down quickly.

no great answers ..there are too many variables

we can only deal with the basics and what actually happens with fronts


sometimes a front will pass thru and shift to nne winds and overnight there is surf into the mornng out of the north to northeast...at least in the coastal bend area