Frigid and Firing: Was the East Coast the Best Place to Surf This Winter?

The nice thing about slipping and taking a hard fall on frozen seawater on the beach is that there’s likely no on there to see it. As you lay on the ice, checking to make sure you didn’t snap off a fin, thinking about how long the beach has been frozen, you realize there were likely no snickering witnesses to your misfortune because the wind chill is below zero.

The start of 2026 has been one for the (ice) ages on the East Coast, giving surfers the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. From frosty weeks in Florida to more Outer Banks houses going in the drink to rifling double overhead barrels at the height of a snowstorm.

“This winter was one of the coldest winters of the past two decades. The unseasonable weather started in late November and lasted through February. While the early winter saw those fun days, the end of January and February saw a storm pattern that brought consistent waves and a couple blockbuster swells,” said Micah Sklut, founder and forecaster for the wave forecast site SurfCaptain.com.

The scenario has been surreal. Unusual cold fronts came early this year, dropping both water and air temps in December. By the holidays, which can be on the warmer side, the mid-Atlantic had already seen a few snowfalls. The year started cold and got colder with a series of small to medium sized south swells. But by the middle of January, a powerful brought not only waves but a wintry mix with a powerful easterly swell and light winds on the backside, that delivered the first of a series of easterly swells. Simply checking the waves meant navigating a frozen coastal landscape. Big cold peaks unloaded a wonderland of dark water tubes for the Mid-Atlantic.

But the pump was now primed as lows started moving off the coast and up. The weather got even colder. The next several storms delivered days and days of clean peeling surf for points north as more houses fell into the sea in Buxton, NC.

And the crowds for these swells, which have become commonplace at many of these breaks, were greatly reduced thanks to wind chills below zero. New Jersey’s surf temps fell to as low as 31.  Surfers wore frozen seawater like badges of honor.

And the atmosphere wasn’t done yet. The next storm hit Northern California on Feb 19, burying communities in white. It came across the country, forming a new, powerful low and by Feb. 22, exploded off the East Coast. Over the next two days, it would move north up the coast with the pressure dropping to 965 mbars and delivering the most snow this region has seen since.

“To understand seasonal weather patterns, we look for triggers from large scale oscillations, such as the El Nino-Southern Oscillation or a lesser talked about oscillation called the Arctic Oscillation (AO.) This winter was in a La Nina phase, which created High Pressure in the West, but a deep trough in the East. This brought the cold Polar Vortex down to latitudes much further south than normal. Additionally, the negative AO allowed for a weak jet stream and a high-pressure blocking pattern that allowed the cold air to persist along the East Coast for weeks at a time in December and January,” explained Sklut.

“The AO then entered a neutral phase for late winter and strengthened the storm track off the Mid Atlantic. This resulted in a much more active swell pattern and a couple big swell events.”

By the numbers, the February storm was an absolute banger. Fall River, Mass. Saw 40 inches. Some 600,000 people lost power. And as the buoys were spiking, many surfers were furiously digging their vehicles out of the snow and white knuckling through the blizzard to simply get to the beach. What they found was nothing short of historic – Long Island and parts of New Jersey, specifically had overhead to double overhead bombs for those who had the motivation to hammer out duck dives after all the shoveling.

“Spring” is two weeks out. As every surfer north of Hatteras Island knows, that means very little. Though the extreme part of winter is likely over, the ocean will hold onto those cold temps for months. But warm and cool air clashing is a hallmark of March and April so the action may continue.