Why the morning?  What’s so good about the mornings?  There are afternoons and evenings with incoming tides.  What makes the morning so good, I ask myself as I looked at the crappy surf this afternoon, looking at the wonky waves pushing across the super low tide sandbar.

For the majority of swells we get along the gulf coast the best of the surf occurs late in the morning.  The fronts often move into the gulf in the evening time, occasionally bringing up high quality surf in the evening.  But most often, the morning is the best time to surf, because the strongest of the wave energy arrives towards the beginning of the wave window.  Very often the major incoming tidal swing is in the morning. The incoming tide coinciding with the strongest pulses of swell forms the best surf.  If you can get offshore winds with that, your golden.

Interestingly there is also often a tide change pulse of three or four really good waves when the tide changes.  These pulses don’t happen at every spot.  You’ll notice an unusually high quality wave that happens on the tide change.

Overall, mornings are pretty much the only time to surf.  Not every morning is the best time of the day to surf.  In fact there are a decent number of days when the best swell arrives during mid-day, in the afternoon, or late in the evening, but during the wintertime, the morning thing is a good rule of thumb.  Certain peaks can get pretty crowded during these peak wintertime hours, but that one epic wave can really make a session.