What's Refraction?

Beautiful, ain't it? This is refraction in action, baby.

The incoming swell comes straight on, but then bends and "wraps" around the island, changing direction as it breaks. How freaking cool is that!??

But I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that your surf break probably doesn't look like that, so why's this relevant? 🤷🏻‍

Chances are that your beach looks more like this. The green arrow represents the incoming swell heading directly to the beach.

This is great! All is well in the world. 100% of the swell energy from the open ocean hits the beach and we get great waves.

However, consider the following scenario where the swell is coming from a completely different direction, like this

Oof. That swell is out of here and disappears like your drunk friend after a few too many spicy margs. When the swell is coming from that direction, sadly there won't be any waves at your beach 🥺

Remember how we talked about surf height 🆚 swell height and how they are definitely not the same thing? This is the main reason why.

👉 So remember: if you're using a site that's showing you swell height and not surf height, refraction is one reason the forecast can be extremely misleading.

👉 Also remember: Swellify does all of these advanced calculations for every spot, for every hour of every day so you don't have to.