When is the best time to surf La Saladita?
Updated 2026-09-26
The short answer from 47 years of reanalysis: the point receives the most wave energy from May through September, with September the most powerful month on average, June a close second and December the quietest. The trade-off is that the same months are the rainy season and the hurricane season. Below is the month-by-month record behind that sentence, with the source and period next to every number, and a plain description of the four seasons that shape a surf trip here.
Month by month: swell and wave energy
| Month | Wave power, mean kW/m | Wave power, 90th pct kW/m | Swell height, mean m | Swell height, 90th pct m | Swell period, mean s | Typical face at the point |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 7.3 | 11.7 | 0.63 | 0.82 | 10.4 | waist-to-chest (about 2.2 ft) |
| February | 8.2 | 12.9 | 0.73 | 0.98 | 10.8 | waist-to-chest (about 2.6 ft) |
| March | 10.1 | 15.5 | 0.80 | 1.04 | 11.0 | waist-to-chest (about 2.8 ft) |
| April | 12.0 | 18.3 | 1.01 | 1.38 | 11.2 | shoulder-high (about 3.5 ft) |
| May | 13.8 | 21.7 | 1.23 | 1.60 | 11.4 | shoulder-high (about 4.3 ft) |
| June | 14.1 | 22.7 | 1.19 | 1.64 | 10.0 | shoulder-high (about 4.2 ft) |
| July | 13.1 | 20.7 | 1.11 | 1.54 | 10.1 | shoulder-high (about 3.9 ft) |
| August | 13.2 | 21.1 | 1.15 | 1.52 | 10.3 | shoulder-high (about 4.0 ft) |
| September | 14.6 | 24.6 | 1.30 | 1.82 | 9.5 | shoulder-high (about 4.6 ft); 90th-pct days overhead |
| October | 12.0 | 20.1 | 1.14 | 1.50 | 10.2 | shoulder-high (about 4.0 ft) |
| November | 8.7 | 13.6 | 0.92 | 1.22 | 10.5 | waist-to-chest (about 3.2 ft) |
| December | 7.1 | 11.1 | 0.66 | 0.88 | 10.2 | waist-to-chest (about 2.3 ft) |
Wave power: ERA5-Wave reanalysis via the Open-Meteo marine archive, requested at 17.8375°N, 101.7606°W and resolved to the nearest 0.5° offshore node (17.5°N, 102.0°W, about 45 km SW of the break), hourly, 1979–2025, P ≈ 0.5 × Hs² × Tp (this site’s wave-power artifact, regenerated 2026-09-19; see the wave-power finding). Swell height and period: Open-Meteo marine historical archive, same offshore node, 1979–2025 (this site’s climatology artifact, regenerated 2026-09-19). “Typical face” applies the forecast engine’s local rule of about 3.5× significant height to the monthly mean swell height; it is a translation of the mean, not a measured face height, and set waves run larger.
Month by month: weather, water and storms
| Month | Rain, mean mm | Air, mean max / min °C | Sea surface, mean °C | Wind, mean kt (ERA5 grid) | Storms within 1,500 km, avg | Storm-days within 1,500 km, avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 16.5 | 28.9 / 22.0 | 28.1 | 3.3 | 0 | 0 |
| February | 5.1 | 28.8 / 21.9 | 27.4 | 3.4 | 0 | 0 |
| March | 7.5 | 28.6 / 21.8 | 26.9 | 3.6 | 0 | 0 |
| April | 0.3 | 29.0 / 22.4 | 26.9 | 3.7 | 0 | 0 |
| May | 12.7 | 29.8 / 23.9 | 27.9 | 3.9 | 0.6 | 2.4 |
| June | 155.0 | 29.6 / 25.1 | 29.3 | 3.6 | 2.0 | 8.9 |
| July | 159.7 | 30.0 / 25.4 | 30.1 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 9.9 |
| August | 209.3 | 29.6 / 25.4 | 30.3 | 3.0 | 2.8 | 9.8 |
| September | 288.7 | 28.7 / 24.9 | 29.8 | 2.9 | 3.1 | 12.9 |
| October | 165.8 | 28.9 / 24.7 | 29.6 | 2.8 | 2.1 | 9.1 |
| November | 27.1 | 29.3 / 23.8 | 29.3 | 2.9 | 0.5 | 1.8 |
| December | 7.8 | 29.1 / 22.7 | 28.7 | 3.1 | 0.01 | 0.05 |
Rain, air temperature and wind: ERA5 via the Open-Meteo historical archive at the same point, 1979–2025 (climatology artifact, 2026-09-19); the ERA5 grid is about 31 km and the weather page documents that models track neither daily gusts nor sea-breeze strength well here, so the wind column is a large-scale mean, not what the beach feels. Sea surface temperature: this site’s SST climatology for the nearest satellite grid cell, 1982–2025. Storms: NHC HURDAT2 best-track, East and Central Pacific basins, 1949–2025, counted within 1,500 km of La Saladita (storm climatology artifact, 2026-09-19); pre-1966 counts are known to be low because the observing network was sparse.
The four seasons of a surf trip here
Southern-hemisphere groundswell season, April to October
Winter storms in the Southern Ocean at 35–50°S send groundswell that takes six to eight days to reach this coast; the forecast’s extended outlook watches those source regions for exactly that reason. In the record, mean wave power in April–October is 13.2 kW/m against 11.2 kW/m for the year as a whole, and the monthly means climb from 12.0 in April to a plateau of 13–14.6 kW/m from May through September. May has the longest mean period of the year (11.4 s) with the rain not yet arrived, which is why the dry end of the groundswell season, roughly April to early June, is the window where long-period south swell and dry weather overlap. The forecast page’s energy percentile is built on this same record: a 30 kW/m day is unusual in May and unremarkable in September.
Rainy season, mid-June to mid-October
The rainfall-regime artifact defines onset as the first day after 1 April when the trailing seven-day rain exceeds 5 mm a day, and its 47-year mean is day 168, about 17 June; the end (last such day before 1 November) averages day 292, about 19 October. September is the wettest month (288.7 mm mean), and the mean annual maximum one-day fall is 104 mm. None of that need cost a morning: the station record on the weather page shows two-thirds of wet-season rain falling between 6 pm and 6 am, with late mornings nearly dry. The rainfall finding also reports that wet days now cluster into more distinct runs than they did in 1979 (+1.4 runs per decade in the regenerated artifact), so wet-season weeks alternate between soaked and open rather than drizzling evenly. Sea temperature peaks in August (30.3°C mean) and air minima sit at 25°C, so no wetsuit question arises in any month.
Hurricane season, May to November, peaking in September
Across 77 years of HURDAT2, the first tropical cyclone to pass within 1,500 km of La Saladita has arrived on average around day 156, about 5 June (median day 153), and the phenology finding reports that date moving earlier by 2.3 days per decade (p = 0.008), with storm counts within 1,500 km rising 1.2 per decade. September averages 3.1 storms and 12.9 storm-days within 1,500 km; June through October each average two or more storms. For a surfer this cuts both ways. Cyclone swell is a first-order source of waves here, but the engine caps the score at 3 when an active system sits within 300 km to the south and at 6 within 1,000 km, because nearby storms bring chaotic mixed seas and an onshore wind regime. From December through April the storm count is effectively zero.
Dry season, November to April
Rain averages under 30 mm a month from November to April (0.3 mm in April) and the ERA5 record shows the year’s slightly stronger large-scale winds in the dry months (3.3–3.9 kt mean, 6.3–8.0 kt 90th percentile, against 2.8–3.0 kt and 5.2–5.7 kt in July–October). Swell is the smallest and the least powerful of the year, December and January averaging 0.63–0.66 m and about 7 kW/m, with mean periods still above 10 s. Because the forecast score is size-neutral, a clean waist-high December morning can score as well as a September one; the difference is that the board is a log and the ride is smaller. Sea temperature bottoms out in March–April at 26.9°C. Dawn in these months is a high tide on 71–100% of days and a low one on none, because the lows here fall at about 1–4 am and 1–4 pm all year (see the tide clock).
What this record cannot tell you
- Monthly wind direction at the beach. The climatology artifact carries an “offshore percentage” computed for a 60–130° sector, but the engine has since established from the station that the morning land breeze here is north to north-east, so that column is not reproduced. No monthly breakdown of clean-window length exists yet.
- Monthly counts of good days. The 1-to-10 score has only been produced since 2026 and the ground-truth log is weeks, not years, long. There is no climatology of scores by month.
- Crowds by month. The engine’s crowd estimate is a rule of thumb from quality and day of week, not a count.
- Trends. The findings pages on wave power and rainfall structure were published in June 2026; their underlying artifacts were regenerated in September 2026 with slightly different values, so this page quotes the artifacts for climatology only and leaves trend claims to the findings pages.
Cite as: “When is the best time to surf La Saladita?”, La Saladita Field Guide, lasaladita.com/best-time-to-surf-la-saladita/, updated 2026-09-26.