2025 Surf City El Salvador Pro
Wednesday April 2nd - Saturday April 12th

Facing south-west into the South Pacific Ocean, El Salvador has one of the largest swell windows in the world - larger even than Hawaii's view into the North Pacific.

That said, mid-latitude storms are less common in the South Pacific than its northern counterpart, so El Salvador's primary swell source is the Roaring Forties, particularly the zone extending east of New Zealand. The further east and north those storms project the more consistent and larger the resultant energy will be in El Salvador.

Of course, the opposite is also true: storms that form further south and west have less consistency and power. That's an important point going into this forecast.

While not totally inactive, the start of the El Salvador Pro waiting period will feature a very inconsistent, moderate-sized swell generated at the far extent of the swell window.

The swell in question will form to the south and south-west of New Zealand, which is some 13,000km from Punta Roca and hardly ideal for limited-time surfing. Think two or three sets per heat.

A couple of days before the waiting period kicks off next Wednesday, the swell will arrive, generated by the aforementioned polar low that fired up south of New Zealand last Friday. The same low actually generated the rare long-period S/SE groundswell that impacted Australia's East Coast on Tuesday, though it’s the northern flank of the system that generated the swell for El Salvador.

With a travel time of nine days, this swell will lose a lot of size and consistency on its journey to El Salvador. It's due to arrive on Sunday, building through the day ahead of a peak later in the day if not Monday. Very infrequent 4-6ft sets may be seen at the peak of the swell, though come two days later when the contest begins it will be on the way out and a very inconsistent 3-4ft.

Punta Roca during last year's contest (WSL/Ryder)

From here the general trend is slowly down into the end of the week, bottoming out on the weekend. Despite the enormous swell window, the Pacific lives up to its name.

Before moving on: Local winds will be favourable for the opening days with light, locally offshore land breezes making way to weak sea breezes.

The next noticeable increase in size is likely later on Sunday (day 5) but more so Monday (day 6), with a small, tight low firing up to the south of Tahiti this weekend. This looks to be the start of a flurry of stronger storm activity firing up in the medium-range swell window for El Salvador. The first low - i.e the one forming near Tahiti - will generate a pulse of 3-5 foot swell, with the following swells producing waves of similar size; the swell trains possibly overlapping to increase consistency at Punta Roca.

At the end of the waiting period, there is a chance of a stronger, larger swell for the final two days but we’ll have a closer look at this in the next update.