SwellPower®
Old Man’s Surf Report (Old Man’s) has a great feature to allow users to understand how powerful the waves are before they go into the water. A lot of work went into creating our SwellPower® Rating which helps parents or surfers decide if they want to surf in certain conditions.
SwellPower® is related to when the swell hits your surf break lifting the wave higher before it breaks (shoaling). It is measured in Kilojoules (kj) and indicates the power of the forecasted waves and notably can be used as a guide to your surfing conditions.
In this Old Man’s how-to video we will show users’ accessing, viewing and understanding our ”SwellPower®”:
From the man screen, on top, tap on the number indicating kJ’s.
The screen changes to a SwellPower® rating system with the bright blue color on the bottom describing who should be out in those surf conditions with the actually rating on top of that measured in Kilojoules (KJ).
The higher you go on the chart, the higher the numbers are representing who should be surfing.
To get back to the main screen tap on the x on the upper-right-hand-corner.
More about SwellPower®:
Basically, wave shoaling is how incoming wave energy underwater slams into the sloping landmass near the shore.
Beaches with an abrupt drop-off result in wave energy slamming into them harder, pushing face heights higher; however, slower-sloped breaks (like many reefs) have a less dramatic lifting effect when incoming wave energy interacts with it, resulting in lower face heights.
Since the periods of waves determine their speed, long periods move faster producing super fast moving waves with periods 20+ seconds will result in a more widely disparate wave-shoaling factor. (see www.oldmanwaves.com/how/2020/8/8/swell-period)