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The excess of waves

Atlantic Ocean: the raw wave energy maker | Photo: Kosinska/Creative Commons

Have you ever wondered how it feels to live in a place with an excess of waves? It sounds like a paradox, but it happens.

I don't recall an autumn/winter season like the one of 2025.

In November and December, the classical North Atlantic swells, fueled by back-to-back intense and very active low-pressure systems, have produced storms that have translated into large, nonstop movements of wave trains.

When I mean nonstop, it is literally continuous, round-the-clock sea power hitting terra firma as if reminding us who's in charge.

It's unprecedented, at least since I remember putting a wetsuit on on this rough stretch of coastline in the southwest of Europe.

How weird is it to stay dry for a month due to too much supply of the scarce resource that are waves?

As I write these words, I can witness giant waves slamming the massive stone breakwater of one of the busiest ports in western Europe.

And it's been going like this for several consecutive weeks - all morning, all afternoon, and all night.

Purple has been the most common hue in the wave height buoy measurements chart.

Southwest of Europe, December 2025: nonstop, raw Atlantic Ocean energy

Unlimited, Nonstop Waves of Energy

From the window, looking north, I can spot the towering whitewater walls relentlessly marching towards the sandy beach, unstoppable, violent, and constant.

And there are no breaks. It's been like this forever.

These broken avalanches of water are bigger than any wave I've ever ridden, and most of them are born out of colossal closeouts that sound like war bombs detonating close to the frontlines.

The amount of wave energy generated by these northwest groundswells could very well power a small town for a few days, I reckon.

Surfers, who are pretty much everywhere all week where I live, have disappeared. Vanished, nowhere to be seen.

The scent of wax in the air is gone.

The freshwater showers available up the beach have not shed a drop of H2O in a long time.

And if you think you can find a hidden cove protected by the immense Atlantic territory, you're wasting your time.

The harsh truth is that there are no options.

Finding a sheltered corner in the Atlantic Ocean is an impossible mission, as the swells are so brutal that they'll wrap around headlands, piers, and breakwaters and still conserve a lot of energy as they make their way to the shoreline.

Every joule of wave power infiltrates every inch of natural or artificial coastal protection, making the idea of a surfable wave a memory of the good old, late-summer September days.

Winter swells: we never know when they will end | Photo: Shutterstock

Raw Sea Power

It's like flat days in reverse. From nothing to everything. From zero to unlimited waves.

The classic surfer lament of "not enough waves" flips into "too many waves." It's so absurd that it feels like a metaphorical and philosophical teaching from Nature.

Having so many waves that you can't actually ride them is surreal. It's like we're drowning in swell.

My eyes now turn south. It's 12:20 pm. The prevailing swell pattern here on this side of the Old Continent is NNW, NW, and WNW.

I am sitting sideways to the traveling waves and facing those gorgeous lines reflecting the sun and shining as they move at impressive speed.

The moving line gets golden and advances against the greyness of the ocean's surface.

Line after line after line. It's unbelievably beautiful. And frustrating.

What's harder? A flat spell or the winter storm season? It's hard to tell.

During no-waves-at-all summer days, I've learned that I can always inflate my stand-up paddleboard and cruise around the rocky islands near me.

But when the fury and rawness of the magical Atlantic Ocean unleashes its original force on human territory, we can just observe and marvel.

I take a walk to the limits of this same human territory, to the last meters before getting hit by a humungous backwash spectacle that explodes on the rocks resting on the beach.

I take a deep, defeated breath of sea breeze and contemplate, humbly, the feast of surf that is taking place hundreds of meters off the sand strip.

One of Nature's most unforgettable shows is one.

It's like anything that I've ever seen. It's an excess of waves.

It makes me feel exactly as I did when I was completely surrounded by golden sand, deep in Morocco's Sahara Desert, 20 years ago - my utter insignificance.

We are nothing. And too much of something we love is often too much.


Words by Luís MP | Founder of SurferToday.com



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