Wave Knowledge
Understanding the Hawaiian scale, and wave height - Ask a Surf Forecaster
DailyStoke.com: What’s the deal with the Hawaiian scale and measuring waves from the back of the wave? Shouldn’t waves be measured from the point of view of a terrified surfer who’s late for the drop on something that’s “only 10 feet” Hawaiian? Then, when it’s measured on the face… Waist, Chest, Head –surfers wonder if it’s being measured on MiniMe. On one surf forecasting site which shall go unnamed tells me it’s offshore and chest high everyday!
Socalsurf.com: Ah good ol’ Hawaiian Scale…nobody really seems to understand how or why it came about…or even what it really translates into from a normal “face-size” perspective…it is all pretty subjective. From what I have heard the original Hawaiian-Scale sort of brewed up in the late-1950’s into the 1960’s as the NWS got more organized and started to gather wave heights from trained observers…the guys reporting the wave heights looked at surf size in a totally different way than most people, maybe it was the machismo of the surfers of the day or maybe it was an attempt to mislead people when the surf was good. Eventually people started to think that Hawaiian size meant the “back of the wave” as seen from the water because the reported heights were pretty similar…but that didn’t even match real “feet” wave heights very often.
Nowadays when I hear it is “5-foot Hawaiian” I automatically double the size and give it a pretty solid margin of error…usually Hawaiian is about half the face size…but it completely depends on exactly who is giving the wave heights and how gnarly they are feeling that day. If you surf enough in Hawaii you sort of get a feel for what they are talking about but really it has very little to do with actual measureable wave heights…sort of like a different number system (metric vs. English) or something.
When I do reports and forecasts in California I always use face-size…and how it corresponds to an average sized human…so a chest high wave should have the rideable portion of the wave line up with your chest. I can’t say how other sites do it…but that is how I do it.
Adam Wright runs www.socalsurf.com and is a professional
meteorologist. He’s been a surf forecaster since 1999, and covers SoCal and Baja for Wavewatch.com as well as the weekly snow and surf outlooks for Fuel.tv. DailyStoke happens to think there is no better resource online to understanding waves, in plain English, than
Socalsurf.com. Learn more there, now!
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It started with Diffenderfer, Curren, Greg Noll, the Hoffman Brothers, Buzzy Trent, and a couple of the other guys who were on the NS in the late 50’s into the 60’s. They liked to scare the new guys coming over by claiming the waves were smaller then they were. After a while it became the style to underestimate wave size. I was there in the middle 60’s. I never worry about the back, only the part that is going to hit me
I would like to see the Hawaiian scale applied to the waves at Teahupoo. This wave just drops out over the reef. If you’ve ever seen the back side of a Teahupoo wave, it’s pretty small compared to the face.
When I lived in Hawaii back in the ’70’s, the radio/media surf reports were mostly down sized just to keep the crowds away. So considering that we now have live camera feeds to many spots, we can see for ourselves.
As for the Hawaiian scale of measuring the waves from the back, if memory serves me right, I believe I read some where that Ricky Grigg, the Hawaiian surfer/oceanographer might have been one of the pioneers of this technique.
first chapter done, now understanding cout and cin functions
halfway through the second (variables)