Photo Credit: Kevin Maines, Surfer: Emily Moore

After a relatively inconsistent summer, Hurricane Erin being a somewhat singular (though spectacular) event in quality tropical surf, and a windy October I was all set to deem 2025 the average Northeast Florida year in surf. In recent years we’ve been blessed with several high pressure trade swells that produced a few days of fun waist to chest high surf each during the summer. While we had a quick shot of short period windswell from Chantal, the high pressure systems seemed either out of position or suppressed lining up more with our expectations of East Coast summers having small surf. Surf camp was easier this year. We usually get fun waves from a tropical system in the fall but we’re never promised that swell, wind, and tide will come together for a big clean day. It’s normal for September and October to be windy and we were fortunate to have the wind switch offshore in October for some of the best quality waves we’ve had for a local ESA event in years.

It wasn’t until November that 2025 got weird. While the second half of November went uncharacteristically quiet in 2024 that month still provided 7 head high + days. In 2025 there were no head high + days and only one day I even registered as chest to shoulder. Going back to 2018, when I first starting publishing an annual wrap-up, every year up to 2024 had at least one “Top 5” day from November (in my albeit subjective rankings). Looking back at 2024 there were 2 days that I had a lot fun surfing featuring chest high or larger surf and offshore wind at some point during the day in November. There was a time where I would have told anyone we usually get really fun surf for the Right Whale Festival. One year doesn’t make a pattern so I’m hoping for a return to classic Novembers (local’s summer) in 2026.

All in all though taking stock of the whole year at once has helped me appreciate that even during average years or rough years there are exciting surfing opportunities in NE Florida. Especially if you are willing to deal with a little wind, ride a little extra foam on all those knee to waist days, and a put on a wetsuit for 4 or 5 months of the year to keep your skills sharp.

Notable observations and surprises from 2025

• Can’t talk about surprises in 2025 without mentioning the freezing rain/sleet/maybe-snow of 1/22 which brought about our first run of head high surf. I promptly acquired a hood to alleviate the ice cream headaches that day.
• A few days later brought the rare but always possible in North Florida, upper 40’s water temps. I purchased a 4/3 wetsuit in California just before moving back to Florida and got questioned on whether I really needed it for Florida. North Florida doesn’t always fit people’s conception of Florida. That might be South of the cape.
• Last year I mentioned how the sargasso washed in some new-to-us species during the summer: Sargassum fish, Sargassum nudibranch,.. This year I was paddling out in some beautiful blue-green water on 3/4 and kept bumping into non-stinging translucent jellies about the size of pomegranate seeds. Some of them stuck together in strands, some of them floating individually. I did some research and found that I was paddling through a bloom of salps.
• 2025 had 9 days in early July with water in the 70’s. On 7/2 and 7/3 I recorded mean water temps of 75. We had camp staff in Neoprene tops and springsuits.
• November had no “head high +” days and 8 “near flat to shin” days. Many of the knee high days were only knee at very specific places and tides. Since 2018 November has averaged 7.7 “head high +” days. November 2025 took the year off.
• In the data 2025 had a lot more “mixed” wind direction days, a lot less “onshore all day,” and near the lowest number of “offshore all day” days. This could be me. I find myself trying to decide how many times the local station needs to go NNW before I’m willing to call it “offshore” or whether “light to none” equals “offshore”. The discrepancy that is less likely to be me is that 2025 had the least number of days where the swell period was 12 seconds or greater, 59, and a handful of those 12 second or greater days were days where you had to search to find a knee high wave at low tide.

Photo Credit: Kevin Maines, Surfer: Aiden Flynn

Top 5 days of 2025 – in reverse chronological order.

• 12/19 – I was sure the wind would blow too hard offshore too early for this day to be much more than a quick side note but we awoke to light offshore winds and really pretty waves that persisted all day.
• 10/12 – This was our epic local ESA contest with the Mens and Womens Open sponsored by Amelia River Cruises. Likely the most tube rides in a local surf contest since “The King of Fernandina” back when Steve Sjuggerud was contest director. Michelle Sharp is our contest director now and will schedule the judges ahead of time so we can plan our free surfs when the waves get this good. It was almost too good. I have always personally felt that while it’s nice to have waves for a contest when the waves are really good I don’t want to surf on a schedule.
• 8/22 – 8/26 I have to admit the time frame around Hurricane Erin is a bit murky for me. I sustained a knee injury the day before “the day”. However, though I didn’t always want to see it for myself when the period stretched out to 14 or 15 seconds I was catching glimpses and hearing stories of our southern sandbars in fine form. Erin definitely accounted for 2 of our “Top 5” days this year but I’m only absolutely certain of 8/21 from a firsthand perspective.
• 8/21 – Likely the undisputed “day” of 2025. I’ve seen the North End heavier but not usually quite so easy to read. The form was so “notebook drawings” classic that I was able to get one really good backside tube and one really good frontside tube with little to no range of motion in my front knee. I didn’t really need to bend it that much, I fit pretty comfortably. With the full tide in the morning it wasn’t even a big scramble to catch the waves. It was likely the easiest the North End gets at that size maybe due in part to some softening of the beach from the dredge project.
• 3/5 – The obligatory South suck-up swell ahead of a front in the “Top 5”. Aiden got a sick one. Took me a while but I eventually managed to get a good wave in each direction: a compact but pretty square, deep left and a bowly right.

Honorable Mentions

• 10/7 – A month or 2 after the knee injury I found that body surfing felt like a safer activity. On this day one of my fins got ripped off of my foot. It was a bouncy, powerful windswell day typical of October 2025.
• 8/4 – As Nassau County has shifted summer break a little later in the year, Surf Asylum has maintained our original camp dates. Largely because the chances of the waves being too much or a lot for beginners seems to go up dramatically in August and the later into fall we get. I took full advantage of this day off and the fairly solid swell on offer.
• 7/5 – I actually had a lot of fun on this day of surf from Tropical Storm Chantal. I remember vividly being able to connect to a tall oncoming peak on a left. There were a lot of waves. You didn’t really have to wait.
• 3/31 – This day was part of a run of surf in late March. I was able to put in just over 4 hours in a single session as the high tide never completely shut it off. Jeff Barksdale put up a fun edit: here
• 1/23 – I got to share the day after the North Florida blizzard with a handful of the most dedicated local surfers that I see on a regular basis. It’s always nice to have a few others out in extreme conditions whether it’s extreme size, power, wind, or cold.

Photo Credit: Kevin Maines, Surfer: CJ Rogers

Data

1) Wave Heights

2) Water Temperature

3) Wind: Onshore vs. Offshore (Choppy vs. Clean)

4) General Wind Wave Direction

5) Swell Period in Seconds