Surfing in South Africa in January

Conditions in January

Water temp. : 21 °C
Wetsuit : Shorty or 2 mm

January is midsummer, and the Southern Ocean lows that drive the Eastern Cape have tracked too far south to reach it. Jeffreys Bay runs at two to four feet and the point breaks into disconnected sections instead of joining up, which is what people mean when they call J-Bay a winter wave.

Durban is having the opposite month. KwaZulu-Natal runs on Indian Ocean storm swell from December to February, and those swells turn its sand-bottom points into the best waves in the country for a few weeks a year. Cape Town, as always, has something somewhere. The water at J-Bay is at 21°C, the year's warmest, which is a shorty and no more.

Learning in January

The best month of the year to learn in the Eastern Cape. Small, warm and gentle, on a coast that is heavy for eight months of the year.

Where a beginner goes in January

These spots are reachable all year. What the month changes is the size of the waves, not the access.

For an experienced surfer

Surf : Good

Go north-east. If your dates are January, Durban is where the country is and J-Bay is a longboard.

How January compares

All twelve months, side by side

Where these figures come from

Air, rain and sunshine: WMO / NOAA 1991-2020 normals for Agadir Al Massira, a station some twenty kilometres inland and so a little warmer than the coast in summer. Swell, period and share of workable wind: Swell Archive and surf-forecast. Water temperature: seatemperature.org and weather-and-climate. Crowds and prices are an editorial judgement, not a measurement.