“All Was Right in the New Jersey Surf World Again"

Years from now, no one on the East Coast will be sitting around the fireplace with kids on their knee telling swell stories from 2025. First off, any of the old cottages with fireplaces anywhere near the coast have already been bulldozed for some kind of investment property. Secondly, 2025 was a junk year for surf, specifically in the mid-Atlantic.

Compared to the epic winter of 2023/24, the last 12 months started cold and flat. There were a handful of swells but more near misses. Then came a string of powerful hurricanes that sent mostly straighthanders to beachbreaks and a plague of northeast winds. It was constant swell that literally ate at one of our most cherished beach communities without much good surf to show for it.  The last few months have been marked by clean little baby waves, but nothing that got the global surf world’s attention like Brendan Tighe jumping from the balcony of that Monstrous Monday December ’23 high rise.

“It feels like that swell that I leaped on and the following swell in January were the last time we’ve seen waves of consequence. I can’t remember a span of such poor waves in my lifetime,” admitted realtor/hellman Tighe this week. A lot of it was wind direction. Some of it was timing.

“It’s been ages since we’ve had a proper New Jersey swell where all the elements lined up,” said Ocean City pro Rob Kelly, “Last winter there was only a handful of days over head high and most of those peaked overnight. This fall has been slow too so everyone has been impatiently waiting to score some waves.”

Winter smacked early, meteorologically speaking. November was colder than usual. The first half of December saw the kind of white early ski seasons New England has seen in recent memory. New Jersey had a gentle Hallmark-style snowfall in the middle of the month. Coastal estuaries froze over. Big falling flakes even made for some epic sessions down at Atlantic Surf Park in Virginia Beach, where East Coasters have been making mass pilgrimages in place of usual autumn swells. The surf temps from Delmarva north are colder than average, already dropping into the high 30s a few times. And then came the solstice.

The forecasts were calling for a jump last Friday and as a deep mid-latitude low came pushing through. By the morning of December 19, icicle lights got detached from homes in the wind and the swell began to build. Then the whole holiday jubilee went offshore forming a great fetch along the Eastern Seaboard. A healthy swell cleaned up first on the Outer Banks with glassy tubes in the long afternoon shadows of condemned homes.

But this one focused its astral energy on New Jersey – particularly points north of Barnegat Inlet, where the southwest wind was proper offshore. Even most of Northern Ocean County was inaccessible most of the day with a current sweeping south to north (nice crowd control if you had a ride home from wherever you wound up.) Sets were well overhead, with a few Christmas tree peaks and that dirty eggnog foam on the inside. Balaram Stack and Will Skudin made the trip from Long Island for better winds. Some decided to sit this one out, on account of they hadn’t seen a wave over stomach-high since the October nor’easter. But cold swell is just part of the routine for surfers in these states and there were plenty of takers willing to do a drift.

“On Friday afternoon we were all anxiously waiting for the wind to go offshore and the swell to show up. It was literally the second shortest day of the year too and with only a few hours of light left we just decided to paddle out and accept the familiar fate of another overnight swell. Then 40 minutes before sunset, a final squall rolled through and with it came the swell, perfectly groomed offshore winds, and one of the coolest looking skies,” added Kelly.

The secondary front swung past, causing the wind to whip harder offshore. The sun shot hard light between the westward horizon and a bank of black/purple clouds overhead. And at the same time, the buoys jumped. It wasn’t XXL for most places but in terms of sheer drama with the cold water and wind, it was a wave of consequence.

“There was this intense rainbow that backdropped the lineup as classic Jersey tubes barreled down the beach at every jetty. It was pretty magical moment and it felt so good to see Jersey doing its thing again after the wave drought we’ve had - even if it was 30 minutes. We surfed till it got dark, which is at 4:30, and then all took our time changing in the parking watching the silhouette of right drainers grinding into the darkness. It felt like all was right in the New Jersey surf world again.”

Tighe, meanwhile, was on day 8 of the flu, a drag of winter on the East Coast that isn’t exactly surf world magic.

“This most recent swell was a nice reminder of why we live here. I’d been staring at the cams all day before I made the decision to go. I could only manage two waves, but two was plenty that day,” he smiled.

By Saturday the surf was down to a quarter of the size, but clean waist to chest high peelers with offshore winds, and more of the same on Sunday, are a less talked about kind of East Coast magic. On these swells, you can surf by yourself, all cold and lonely.

“I’m hoping that was the first sign of a favorable weather pattern shift and we get a more traditional season of winter waves on the East Coast this year,” said Kelly.