La Saladita breaks in pieces, and the full ride only links up when the swell is big enough to fill two gaps along the point. Eleven years of satellite images show how often each part is seen connected. But almost all of the clear images are from October to March: from April to September, sun glare and cloud spoil nearly every pass. So the satellite describes the dry-season break. Summer, when the swell is biggest, is inferred, not observed. The images also cannot say "how many good sessions": each is one instant, around 11 in the morning.
Summer swell would connect the point far more often, if the seabed behaves as it does in the dry season.
| Month | Clear images | Whole ride connected | Middle gap connected | Sea breeze usually turns onshore |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 37 | 12–18% | 24–37% | 11:00 |
| Feb | 41 | 13–18% | 24–38% | 10:30 |
| Mar | 42 | 15–28% | 29–46% | 09:40 |
| Apr | 4 | 20–41% (inferred) | 38–61% (inferred) | — |
| May | 0 | 26–47% (inferred) | 49–67% (inferred) | — |
| Jun | 0 | 30–44% (inferred) | 53–71% (inferred) | 09:50 |
| Jul | 0 | 24–37% (inferred) | 46–64% (inferred) | 10:05 |
| Aug | 1 | 23–38% (inferred) | 47–64% (inferred) | 10:40 |
| Sep | 8 | 30–45% (inferred) | 54–71% (inferred) | 10:25 |
| Oct | 23 | 25–38% | 47–65% | 10:05 |
| Nov | 40 | 15–23% | 30–45% | 10:10 |
| Dec | 45 | 9–16% | 20–33% | 10:35 |
In the dry season, November to March, the whole ride is seen connected in about 9–28% of snapshots. Applying that dry-season behaviour to summer swell gives roughly 20–47%, but that part is inferred.
From April to September there are almost no clear images (13 of 241 in total), because of sun glare and cloud. Summer swell is bigger, so if the seabed responded as it does in the dry season, the whole ride would connect far more often in summer. Summer sandbars may be different, though, and nothing in the satellite record can check that. Even within the dry season, adding swell direction, period and tide shifts individual months by up to about 15 percentage points, so the numbers are shown as ranges. The summer months carry most of the year's wave energy (see Best time to surf).
A chance of catching the connected point at one moment is not a count of good sessions.
A point that connects for one set every two hours and a point that connects on every third wave can look the same in snapshots and feel completely different in the water. How long the connected state lasts, and how often it returns, needs continuous observation. The planned fixed camera will measure it.
Each part of the point responds to a different mix of swell size, direction, period and tide.
The middle gap mostly depends on swell size and tide. The gap near the point also depends on direction and period: swell from west of about 230° needs roughly 0.18 m more height for the whole ride than southerly swell, while for the middle gap alone the difference is about 0.08 m, and longer periods help the whole ride slightly more. So the point behaves less like one wave than like a chain of sections, each filtering the incoming swell differently. That matters for monitoring: if one section changed, it could show up first as a shift in how it responds to direction or tide, before its overall threshold moved.
These effects come from 241 images, with only 36 from southerly swell, so they are early estimates, not forecast rules.
The wind sets the daily window; the tide changes little inside it.
The practical window is the clean wind, from first light until the sea breeze. Inside it, the tide is at or rising toward high, and the effect on connection looks small.
The morning high comes around 7–9 am from December to March and around 9–11 am from May to September, so first light is the lowest water in the window, a few centimetres below the peak. The satellite images suggest that higher water needs somewhat more swell to connect, but they were all taken around 11 am and over a narrow range of tides, so that effect is provisional until the pressure logger and camera measure connection hour by hour. The sea breeze turns earliest in March (about 9:40) and latest in January (about 11:00); the full wind clock is on The wind clock.
Dry season only. 228 of the 241 clear images are from October to March; May to July have none. Every threshold on this page describes the dry-season break.
Whole-ride threshold is thinly supported. Only 10 clear images have more swell than the whole-ride threshold, so the whole-ride ranges are less certain than the middle-gap ones.
Snapshots, not sessions. Every image is one instant, and the chance of catching the point connected includes the luck of a set arriving at that moment.
Measured at about 11 am. The satellite passes at roughly 11:10 local time, after the sea breeze on most days and over a narrow range of tides. The daily picture above is therefore provisional.
Exploratory. How "breaking" and "connected" are defined was chosen after looking at the images. The swell comes from the ERA5 wave model; on Météo-France's model the same thresholds are about 0.2 m lower.
The tide clock comes from the Zihuatanejo harbour gauge. A pressure logger at the break will check whether the open coast behaves the same way.
Connection: 241 clear Sentinel-2 images of the point, 2015 to 20 September 2026, all taken at about 11:10 local time, after removing duplicate processings and screening out sun glint and cloud. A stretch is breaking when whitewater extends more than 25 m seaward; the middle gap is connected when at least 3 of the 5 stretches from −750 to −550 m are breaking, and the whole ride when both gaps are.
Season: two regularised logistic models, one on offshore wave height alone and one adding period, direction and tide, applied to every 11 am hour from June 2015 to January 2024 (ERA5 hourly, Open-Meteo; tide from this site's harmonic model), averaged by month. Ranges combine both models with 200 resamples of whole calendar years.
Clocks: sea-breeze onset from the on-site station (median 10:25, n = 332 mornings). Tide by hour from the harmonic model, predicted for 2025.
Analysis run: 27 September 2026. Exploratory; not a pre-registered test.
Cite as: "The connection season: what satellites can and can't see of La Saladita through the year", La Saladita Field Guide, lasaladita.com/findings/the-connection-season/, 2026-09-27.