Do Mexican Hurricanes Send Swell to the Central Coast?

Hurricanes form off southern Mexico through the summer and fall, and when a big one shows up, surfers here want to know if it will send waves to California. Most won't, because Baja is in the way. A few, like Hurricane Marie in 2014, send huge surf. You can check any active storm on our new storm tracker.

The quick answer

• Baja is a wall. A storm south of Cabo sends most of its swell into the mainland of Mexico or the Baja peninsula. Only storms far enough west have an open-ocean path to California.
• When the path is open, swell arrives from the south-southeast, days after the storm made it. The longest-period waves come first.
• Size is a different question. A storm can have an open path and still send nothing you can surf, because it depends on where the storm aims its wind and for how long.
• The tracker answers "if" and "from when", never "how big". For surf heights and hazards, follow the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center.

Why most hurricanes never reach us

On a globe, swell runs the shortest way from storm to shore. Draw that line from a storm off Acapulco to Port San Luis and it crosses Mexico or Baja on the way. Land stops swell cold, so that storm's waves never get here, however strong it is.

As storms drift west and north, the line from the storm to our coast swings out over open water. Somewhere past the tip of Baja, the path clears the peninsula, first for Southern California and later for the Central Coast.

Hurricanes are hundreds of miles wide, so a storm whose center is blocked can still have part of its wind field over open water. That's why the tracker has three states, not two:

Open the path from the storm's center misses land.

Partly shadowed by Baja the center's path is blocked, but points about 100 miles out in the wind field have a clear path. Expect less.

Blocked by land every path crosses Baja or the mainland.

How long it takes

In deep water, the more seconds between crests, the faster the swell moves. So a storm's swell arrives in order: the long-period forerunners first, then the shorter-period swell that carries most of the energy.

The speeds are fixed by physics. Deep-water swell travels at a group speed of g·T/4π:

Period	Speed	Time to cover 1,500 mi
18 s	about 31 mph	about 2 days
16 s	about 28 mph	about 2 days 6 h
14 s	about 24 mph	about 2 days 13 h

Swell made by a storm 1,500 miles away today starts showing up about two days from now, and the main pulse usually builds over the following day or two. So the tracker shows a time like "From Thu, 4 PM" for each open station: when swell made at the storm's current position could start to arrive.

When it does get through: Hurricane Marie, 2014

Hurricane Marie is the event people on the coast still talk about. On August 24, 2014, the National Hurricane Center's advisory upgraded it to a Category 5 with 160 mph winds and said its swells would reach Southern California by late Tuesday, two days out.

They did. The Associated Press reported blocks of oceanfront homes flooding in Seal Beach and pilings knocked off the Malibu Pier, and the National Weather Service called it the region's most significant southerly swell event since July 1996.

Marie had everything: extreme strength, a huge wind field, and a track far enough west to clear Baja. Most storms have one or two of those at best.

Checking the timing against buoys

Before we put arrival times on a page, we checked them. We took every East Pacific storm that reached hurricane strength from 2014 to 2025, 116 storms in all, and ran the tracker's own path and timing logic against the hourly spectra of four NOAA buoys: Cape San Martin, Santa Maria, Tanner Bank and San Clemente Basin. For each case we looked for a rise in long-period swell from the storm's direction.

The shadow test works. When the tracker called a path open or partly shadowed, the buoy saw a swell arrive 48% of the time. When it called the path blocked, only 8% of cases showed anything, and some of those were probably other swell. "Blocked by land" means what it says.

Arrivals land late, never early. No swell showed up before the tracker's start time. When it missed, the swell came later than the window we first tested, by a median of 23 hours. Storms make most of their swell after they strengthen and move north, closer to us. That's why the tracker now gives only the start time, and says the main swell usually builds over the following day or two.

Many open paths bring nothing. About half of the open-path cases showed no measurable swell from the storm within six days.

How to read the storm tracker

The storm tracker shows every active storm in the Eastern and Central Pacific, with the official National Hurricane Center cone, track and wind field, and a live infrared satellite loop. Pick a storm and the panel's For the California coast section lists five tide stations: Monterey, Port San Luis, Santa Barbara, Santa Monica and San Diego.

• A time in cyan means an open path: swell could start arriving then.
• A time in amber means partly shadowed: some swell may wrap past Baja, but less.
• Blocked by land means none of the storm's swell has a clear line to that station today. Check again later: storms that move northwest can open a path over a day or two.

The time is based on where the storm is now. If it strengthens or turns, the next advisory changes the answer, so check back after each one (every 6 hours).

What the tracker doesn't tell you

It doesn't predict wave height, and it isn't a forecast. Whether a given beach gets surf depends on how it faces, what's offshore and how big the swell is when it arrives. South-facing spots see hurricane swell first; spots tucked behind headlands may not see it at all.

When a big storm has an open path, the National Weather Service usually issues beach hazard statements and high surf advisories for the coast. Those are the official word, and they're what lifeguards follow. Long-period swell can surge up beaches that looked calm minutes earlier and feeds strong rip currents, so if you head out on a south swell day, watch a few sets first and check with the lifeguards.

For daily conditions at your station, the Conditions Console has the tide, swell and wind, and the Coast Map shows swell direction along the whole coast.