Ormond Beach

Best Surf Season (October - March)

Ormond Beach faces east-northeast, and that orientation tells you almost everything about how the surf works here. From October through March, the western Atlantic becomes a battleground of cold fronts and developing coastal lows, and the NE-ENE-E swell window stays active with a steady diet of windswell and occasional groundswell. Average wave heights hold around 2-3ft (0.7m) with periods in the 8-8.5s range, which is punchy, rideable and often surprisingly fun for a beach that skips the massive winter swells of the northern latitudes. The real gold is the wind: 17-21 percent of the time in these months the breeze is blowing from the southwest through west, meaning clean offshore or sideshore-offshore conditions while E/NE swell rolls straight into the beach. In a negative NAO pattern, cold fronts tend to dig deeper into the Southeast, and that is the recipe for repeated glassy mornings with 2-4ft peaks.