WindUp for Surfers
Every other sport here waits for wind. Surfers wait for it to leave. Flip the alarm: WindUp pings you when your break goes glassy or swings offshore — the window worth paddling for.
Set it once — WindUp rings the second surfing wind hits, even on Silent.
What WindUp does for surfers.
- Glass alert — ring when the average DROPS below your ceiling
- Direction filter — only alert when it's offshore at your break
- Catch the mid-week calm window nobody's watching for
WindUp is a free live wind alarm — set your surfing wind window once and it watches your spot for you, even on Do Not Disturb or Silent.
What wind speed do you need for surfing?
Surfing inverts the whole wind question. Onshore wind above roughly 8 knots crumbles faces and turns a good swell to mush; dead calm is glass; and light offshore - about 5-15 knots blowing from land to sea - grooms waves, holds faces open and delays the break. Past 20 knots offshore stops being grooming and starts being a problem: paddling into waves gets hard and spray blinds the takeoff.
Gusts, not just averages
For surfers the gust number is a texture report. A 6-knot average with 14-knot gusts reads calm on paper but puts chop on the face anyway. When the gust and the average sit within a couple of knots of each other, the surface is clean - that's the reading worth driving for.
How to set your surfing alarm
Set WindUp backwards from every other sport: make your MAXIMUM the number that ruins it (say 8 knots onshore), leave the minimum at zero, and add a direction filter for your break's offshore quadrant. The alarm then means one thing - it just went clean at your spot.
The surfing edge.
The dawn-patrol rule is thermal physics: land cools overnight, the sea breeze dies, and many coasts flip light-offshore until mid-morning. That calm window is movable — a cloudy day can hold it until noon, a hot one can kill it by 8. A live station tells you which day you're getting; the forecast usually doesn't.
Popular surfing spots.
| Spot | What to expect |
|---|---|
| Ericeira, Portugal | World Surfing Reserve - the reefs light up when the morning offshore holds. |
| Taghazout, Morocco | Winter points with famously groomed morning offshores. |
| Uluwatu, Bali | Dry-season SE trades blow offshore all day on the Bukit. |
| Jeffreys Bay, South Africa | The famous right fires when the land breeze stands the walls up. |
Surfing wind, answered.
Can I use a wind alarm for surfing?
What wind is best for surfing?
Why do surfers always go at dawn?
Surfing wind, in depth.
More on surfing & WindUp.
Ready when the wind is. It's free.
Set one alarm at your spot. WindUp wakes you up the moment surfing conditions fire.