Wyldewood Beach • Statistics for January

January: Midwinter Windswell on the Southwest Shore

January is one of the two biggest months of the year at Wyldewood Beach, with an average wave height of 0.7m (2.3ft) and an average wave period of 4.1s. The directional breakdown shows why the beach is exposed to the southwest: WSW leads with 17.7%, followed by SW at 15.5% and W at 14.3%, while SSW adds another 7.2%. The favorable S-to-WSW quadrant accounts for roughly 43% of the swell energy. That said, nearly half of all observations are below 0.5m (1.6ft), and the bigger 1-2m (3.3-6.5ft) waves that do show up are almost entirely confined to the SW/W quadrant. With a period of 4.1s, this is locally generated windswell rather than organized groundswell, so conditions default to short-period, choppy and messy. The wind is the bigger issue: onshore S/SSW/SW/WSW flow totals about 40% of observations, while offshore N/NNE/NE/ENE flow is only around 13%, and ideal wind occurs just 1% of the time. Air temperatures average -3.3°C, with arctic bursts down to -20.9°C, water temperatures are near freezing, and average precipitation of 1.77 mm/day often falls as snow. Unless you are a hardcore winter surfer with a thick hood and a high tolerance for freezing spray, January is more about watching the storm track than scoring clean waves.