Santa Rita, Guam · Pacific/Guam
Talofofo Bay
A shallow fringing reef that only stands up on a mid tide. This is the one where getting the tide wrong means getting skinned.
08:00 local · 2026-10-05
47% — the read for this hour
Swell
0.74 m
Period
7 s
Swell from
295°
Wind
9.7 m/s
Wind from
219°
Air
29°C
Marginal — one good hour at most. At Talofofo Bay on this hour the read is 47%. What earns it: peel speed at 9.8 km/h. What costs it: direction match at 163° off the 132° peel.
6 hours worth driving for today: 00:00, 01:00, 10:00, 11:00, 12:00, 13:00.
Tide window for a reef: 0.6–1.4 m of water over the take-off; below 0.40 m it wants the reef just covered matters and the reef is exposed.
Dashed line is the tide above MLLW, solid line is the swell height. Column height is the engine score for that hour. Faded columns are gated. The hour you select is in the URL, so this page is shareable as-is.
Tide station
- Station
- Pago Bay, Guam
- Datum
- MLLW
- Range
- 0.59 m
- Mean
- 0.28 m
Signature interaction
Drag the tide and watch the reef change its mind
The cross-section is drawn from the break's own reef slope. Every change re-runs the shared engine on the server and returns a fresh seal — this control cannot work without the API.
The dashed arrow is the peel, at c = √(g·depth). More water over the take-off means a faster peel, which is why the same swell behaves differently at low and mid tide.
Re-solved by swellread-engine/2026.10.1
- Water over take-off
- exposed
- Break height
- 0.37 m
- Peel speed
- 9.8 km/h
- Wave power
- 2.2 kW/m
Marginal — one good hour at most. At Talofofo Bay on this hour the read is 47%. What earns it: peel speed at 9.8 km/h. What costs it: direction match at 163° off the 132° peel.
Every factor, re-weighted for this tide
- Swell power2.2 kW/m · 2.2%
- Peel speed9.8 km/h · 20.0%
- Wind quality9.7 m/s 76° off · 6.3%
- Tide window0.75 m over the take-off · 18.0%
- Direction match163° off the 132° peel · 0.0%
- Period cleanliness6.5 s · 0.4%
Show your working
Every factor, its weight, and the arithmetic behind it
Weights are renormalised over the factors that have real data behind them. A factor with no data is dropped and said so, never quietly scored at zero.
- Swell power2.2 kW/m · 2.2%
weight 0.220
- Peel speed9.8 km/h · 20.0%
weight 0.200
- Wind quality9.7 m/s 76° off · 6.3%
weight 0.200
- Tide window0.75 m over the take-off · 18.0%
weight 0.180
- Direction match163° off the 132° peel · 0.0%
weight 0.120
- Period cleanliness6.5 s · 0.4%
weight 0.080
engine seal 008bc1b0de96cefd82a989d46179414b9fef0fb27354d540da0dc5fb4cafd9e3d3f81fbb54658b5ff32dfd3e919d89fa
Swell power
P = 1/16 · rho · g · Hs² · Tp = 0.628 · 0.74² · 7 = 2.2 kW/m, against a 22 kW/m "serious day" reference.
Peel speed
c = sqrt(g · depth) = sqrt(9.81 · 0.75 m) = 9.8 km/h over a 0.75 m take-off, with 0.37 m standing up. Full marks 8.5–19 km/h: slower is mush, faster than ~25 km/h is unridable.
Wind quality
Wind is 76° off at 9.7 m/s. Alignment = 1 − (1 + cos 76°)/2 = 0.38; speed envelope at 9.7 m/s = 0.83. Product 0.31.
Tide window
reef wants the reef just covered. Ideal band 0.6–1.4 m of water over the take-off; below 0.40 m the reef is exposed.
Direction match
Swell from 295°, this break peels cleanly from 132°. 163° of error: inside 12° is full marks, past 75° the swell wraps the headland and does not arrive.
Period cleanliness
Tp = 6.5 s. Energy organises between 6 s and 9.5 s; beyond 14 s the swell stands up steeper than a shallow reef can hold, so the score is eased off by up to 35%.
Provenance
Every number above came from one of these
- liveOpen-Meteo Marine APICC BY 4.0, non-commercial attribution requiredfetched 2026-10-04 21:10 UTC168 hourly rows, swell and wind wave.
- liveOpen-Meteo Forecast APICC BY 4.0, non-commercial attribution requiredfetched 2026-10-04 21:10 UTC168 hourly rows, wind and air.
- liveNOAA CO-OPS tide predictionsU.S. Government public domainfetched 2026-10-04 21:10 UTC144 hourly predictions, MLLW datum, station 1631428 (Pago Bay, Guam).
Snapshot generated 2026-10-04T21:10:50.894Z. Break orientation, reef slope and take-off depth come from this project's catalogue and are labelled as estimates, not survey data.