Gulf Coast Surf Forecast
Surf forecast for the Gulf Coast — Galveston, Port Aransas, South Padre Island Texas, and Gulf Shores Alabama. Live cams, 7-day swell, tide and wind.
The Gulf of Mexico is a fetch-limited basin — no open-ocean groundswell reaches it, so everything that breaks on the Texas and Alabama coast is generated inside the Gulf itself. That means short-period wind swell (4-8 seconds) is the staple diet, and timing matters more here than anywhere else: conditions can go from flat to fun and back inside a single day.
The two engines are winter cold fronts and tropical systems. From October through March, fronts pushing off the coast generate days of onshore slop followed by a short, clean window as the wind swings offshore behind the front — the classic Gulf pattern. In hurricane season, a storm anywhere in the Gulf can light up the entire coast with the year's best surf, often while the weather at the beach is still sunny.
South Padre Island is the most consistent Texas spot — deeper water close to shore lets swell arrive with less bottom drag. Port Aransas and Galveston work the same patterns with a bit less size; Galveston's piers organize the sandbars and host the longest-running scene. Gulf Shores, Alabama picks up slightly better exposure to southeast fetch and shares the Florida panhandle's sugar-sand bars.
Water temps run warm: low 60s °F in winter on the upper Texas coast (a 3/2 season) to bathwater mid-80s in summer. Hazards are modest — rip currents near piers and jetties, and stingrays in the shallows (shuffle your feet). It's one of the friendliest learning coastlines in the country when a clean window lines up.