East Asia

Wind, swell & tides for East Asia

Northwest Pacific Basin

Asia’s Pacific side experiences reliable, seasonal monsoon-driven windswells and unpredictable, powerful typhoons. The NE monsoon blows hard and relentlessly through the winter months bringing constant swell and following wind for the bulk of the region. Short-lived NE groundswell is also sent down off the back of the big lows that spin across the North Pacific, mainly affecting Honshu in Japan and the more NE-exposed parts of the Philippines. The monsoon wind reversal sees SW winds arrive in spring, often turning SE, bringing much rain in early summer to Japan. The warm North Equatorial Current hits the Philippines, then bends north into the Kuroshio Current, before the Kamchatka and Oyashio currents bring icy water down from the Aleutians and the Bering Sea for northern Japan. The tidal range is minimal and mostly under 2m.

The Sea of Japan

The vagaries of enclosed-sea swell production limit the number of surfable days to a fraction of the year, usually in the depths of winter. Every now and then a summer or autumn storm will kick up fleeting windswell without the need for extreme full rubber, but you have to be lucky. SE-SW arrives off the back of summer typhoons, heading towards Russia, northern Japan, the Kuril Islands and finally Kamchatka, while rare W-N winds can produce for Southern Japan. NE swells dominate throughout winter, running parallel to Japan but hitting South Korea’s east coast head-on, making for consistent surf from Nov-March. The warm Tsushima current flows northward up the west coast of Japan and on to thaw out Sakhalin in summer but the temps will hit zero degrees celsius in winter and the northern quarter freezes for 3-4 months. Micro-tidal range is similar to the Mediterranean.

East and South China Seas

The NE monsoon plies the corridors of both the East China Sea and the South China Sea from November to March producing fairly reliable windswell and rideable waves in Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Malaysia and West Luzon. This is the primary surf season, bringing waist to headhigh windswell and occasional groundswell from NE-E slipping through the Luzon Strait. From May to mid-September the SW monsoon blows up and pretty much ends the surf season unless it’s waisthigh onshore you are looking for. Typhoons on a rarer W trajectory will bring in summer or autumn surf for Malaysia, Hainan and Hong Kong but are fleeting and difficult to predict. Taiwan, The Ryu Kyu islands, Jeju Do and the Chinese Mainland have better exposure from the typhoons that take the more common northwards arc. The surface currents follow the monsoon winds with a NE to SW flow and an anticlockwise gyre in winter, before switching to a SW to NE flowing current from April to Sept. Tidal range is 2m for the south but a massive 8m off the coast of China in the East.

Philippine Sea

The Philippine Sea holds the record for tropical storms, spinning up the biggest, fastest and highest number of typhoons every year. Their tracks cover a vast area of ocean so a lot of countries are in the firing line. Typhoons form in the open ocean over Melanesia and head due west towards the Philippines, then usually start on an arc northwards in the direction of Japan. It is this arc that produces N-E swell for the Philippines and Pacific Indonesia and SE-SW swells for Taiwan, China, Korea, Japan and beyond. June – Sept will be the heart of the typhoon season, which extends for 10 months (Apr – Jan), appreciably longer than any other region. The Philippine Sea is also fully affected by the NE monsoon and Northwest Pacific Basin NE groundswell during the winter months, plus picks up any residual and local swell in the water during the flatter summer months. Tides average 1m but can hit 1.8m on some islands.