Surf Data 2 - Where to Surf

December 31, 2020

This is the second part in a series of data analysis posts using surfing data I’ve collected since 2017. If you want to see the data visualized geospatially, check out the first post!

This time, I am curious about which location in California has the most consistent surf. I started by analyzing the parameter, ‘Wave Quality’, which is ranked on a 10-point scale. (Disclaimer: 'Wave Quality' is subjective (i.e. it's based on my judgment), but I use the wave shape, wave height, and wave consistency to generate a value).

In this analysis, I used Python for data manipulation and Illustrator to produce the tables. The timeframe of the data presented spans Jan 1st, 2018 to Dec 31st, 2020 (3 years).

Spot Consistency

As displayed above, I ranked the wave quality at each spot using two methods. The first was a simple average and the second was a proportion of the amount of very good days (9’s or above) by the total count. The three spots that overlapped between these two methods: Moss Landing, Lowers (Lower Trestles), and South Jetty.

Region Consistency

I performed the same analysis as the spots with the regions and the results are self-explanatory (seen above).

The biggest issue in the analysis was the sample size. In both the Spots and the Regions, I chose to include spots and regions which had more than 10 occurrences. This narrowed the sample space to 18 and 6 in spots and regions, respectively. In the case of Moss Landing (in Monterey), it was an hour from where I was living so I would only make the commute if I was confident there would be good waves. This immediately caused a bias because I never surfed Moss Landing on its ‘average’ days. Overall, larger sample sizes are more accurate. In conclusion, I will keep collecting data!

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