Hawaii Big Wave Season: Live Cams for Pipeline, Waimea and Jaws

What makes a big day

Period matters more than height. The period is the time between waves, and it tells you how much energy a swell carries and how far it has travelled. A 6-foot swell at 8 seconds is wind swell from not far away; the same height at 16 seconds comes from a storm thousands of miles away and stands up into much bigger waves when it hits the reef. On the North Shore, 14 seconds or more is the sign of a real winter swell.

Direction decides who gets it. The North Shore of Oʻahu faces north-northwest, so swells from the west-northwest round to the north hit it squarely. Northeast swells wrap in weakly, and south swells, which light up Waikīkī in summer, do not reach it at all. Peʻahi on Maui faces north and wants the same northwest-to-north swells.

Wind decides whether it is clean. The trade winds blow from the east-northeast most days. At Pipeline that is a cross-shore wind, and it tends to strengthen through the day, which is why mornings are usually cleaner. A day with light wind, or a wind with some south or east in it, is a good day to be watching.

Reading the buoys

The forecast is a model; the buoys measure what is actually in the water. NOAA’s National Data Buoy Center publishes each buoy’s readings every half hour or so: WVHT is the significant wave height in metres (multiply by 3.28 for feet), DPD the dominant period in seconds and MWD the direction the waves come from. Watch for the period jumping up first: the longest-period waves of a new swell outrun the rest, so a rise from 8 to 17 or 18 seconds is the first sign that a winter swell has arrived.

• Buoy 51101, NW Hawaii: About 220 miles northwest of Kauaʻi, in the path of northwest swells: a swell shows here first.
• Buoy 51201, Waimea Bay, Oʻahu: A CDIP wave buoy (station 106) just off Waimea Bay: what is arriving on the North Shore now.
• Buoy 51205, Pauwela, Maui: A CDIP wave buoy (station 187) off Maui’s north shore, about 10 miles from Peʻahi.

Because long-period waves travel faster, you can estimate when a swell seen at buoy 51101 reaches the Waimea Bay buoy, about 310 miles to the southeast. In deep water a swell’s energy moves at roughly 0.78 metres per second for every second of period:

That is a guide for a northwest swell; a swell from further north reaches 51101 at a different angle. The National Weather Service in Honolulu issues High Surf Advisories and Warnings for north-facing shores when big surf is forecast, and those are the official word.

Watching in person, safely

• Stand well back. On big days the sets surge far up the sand at Waimea, Pipeline and Sunset and can knock people off their feet and drag them in. Stay behind lifeguard signs and ropes, keep children close, and never turn your back on the ocean.
• Treat closures and warnings as final. When a High Surf Warning is up, lifeguards close beaches and the water is for experienced big-wave surfers and rescue crews only. Pipeline breaks over shallow reef, and strong currents run along the whole coast.
• Plan for traffic. Kamehameha Highway is the one road along the North Shore and it backs up for miles on big-swell and contest days. Park only in marked spaces, never stop on the highway to look, and walk on the shoulder with care. Slope-stabilization work began beside the highway at Waimea Bay in March 2026 after landslides (per Wikipedia’s Waimea Bay article), so expect work zones there.
• At Peʻahi, the view is from the cliffs. There is no beach; spectators watch from an overlook on 100 to 150-foot cliffs at the end of a rough, mostly unpaved road. Stay back from the edge, and respect any closure of the road or the land it crosses.
• Be a good guest. These are neighbourhoods first. Keep driveways clear, take your rubbish with you, and give lifeguards, photographers on the sand and the surfers’ families room.

Contest dates change every winter and some events only run when the waves allow. For the professional contests at Pipeline, check the World Surf League; for the history of The Eddie and the Triple Crown, the linked Wikipedia articles keep a record of when each ran.

Questions

When is big wave season in Hawaii?

On the north-facing shores of Oʻahu and Maui it runs through the northern winter, usually from October or November into March, when storms in the North Pacific send long-period swells south to the islands. The biggest and most frequent swells tend to come between December and February. In summer the North Shore is usually flat and the surf is on the south shores instead.

How big does it have to be for The Eddie to run at Waimea Bay?

The Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational waits for open-ocean swells of about 20 feet, which translate to wave faces of roughly 30 to 40 feet in the bay. Its holding window opens in early December, but it has only run eleven times since 1984, most recently on December 22, 2024. If the swell never arrives, there is no contest that winter.

What swell makes the North Shore big?

Size alone is not enough: the swell needs a long period and the right direction. A swell from the northwest or north with a period of 14 seconds or more carries far more energy than a short trade-wind swell of the same height, and it is what lights up Pipeline, Sunset and, on the biggest days, Waimea. Swells from the northeast wrap in weakly, and south swells do not reach the North Shore at all.

Is there a live cam at Waimea Bay or Jaws?

Not on Port of Cams at the moment. Our live North Shore camera is the Banzai Pipeline cam. We do not list a camera until we have checked that it streams, so this page links the Pipeline cam and the satellite view rather than standing in an unrelated camera for Waimea, Sunset or Peʻahi.

Is the swell forecast on this page the wave height at the beach?

No. It is the model’s deep-water swell height, the average height of the larger waves out in the open ocean. Breaking waves on a reef can be much bigger than that on a long-period swell (a 20-foot open-ocean swell can make 30 to 40-foot faces at Waimea), and locals often call wave size in Hawaiian scale, which reads roughly half the face height. Use the tiers as a guide to which days are worth watching, and the buoys and cameras for what is actually happening.