Chunan 45.1

#4386 of 5756 surf spots in the world · Taiwan · Miaoli · near Miaoli

Very consistent, wind is the enemy here, peaks in September.

Best time to surf Chunan

The best time to surf Chunan is September. It rarely works. In September the water sits around 29°C, so pack boardshorts, and the typical wave is 0.9 m. The nearest airport is RMQ (53 km) and the nearest town is Miaoli (14 km).

What is under Chunan

Eight kilometres out along its swell window the sea floor falls away into open ocean, 755 m, shoaling steadily over the last kilometres. Alongside the bank the survey finds a channel, 1387 m against 755 m, deep enough to bend swell onto one peak instead of spreading it along the beach.

Measured, not estimated: NOAA ETOPO 2022 global relief at 15 arc-seconds, about 460 m per cell, sampled along this spot’s own swell window. At that scale the survey sees passes and channels; it cannot see a reef ledge, so nothing here is said about how the wave breaks.

Why 45.1

Seven parts, each normalised 0 to 1 and multiplied by its weight; the sum is scaled so the best spot in the world scores 100. Wave quality and what the spot does on its best days carry more than half of it, which is what separates this from a ranking of where the water is warm.

The detail

Faces 295° with 36% open water around it. Friendly morning wind 27% of days. Mean peak period 6.2 s. Days over 3 m: 2%. On its best tenth of days it reaches 2.5 m, with a peak period of 8 s. Mellow days (0.4 to 1.2 m): 41%. Months that work: 10 of 12. Coordinates 24.695, 120.853 (OpenStreetMap).

What it costs to be here

Airport and town on the doorstep, so the local estimate is 8% above the country average. Estimate: World Bank PPP price level for Taiwan (2025, United States = 1.00) (no separate series, so we scale CN) applied to a fixed surfer basket, then adjusted for how remote the spot is. Your own number moves with the season and how you live.

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