New Orleans 51.1

#3975 of 5756 surf spots in the world · 🇧🇷 Brazil · Alagoas · near Maceió

Works almost every day, wind is the enemy here, no off season.

Best time to surf New Orleans

The best time to surf New Orleans is March, April, June. It rarely works. In April the water sits around 29°C, so pack boardshorts, and the typical wave is 1.1 m. The nearest airport is MCZ (23 km) and the nearest town is Maceió (19 km).

What is under New Orleans

Eight kilometres out along its swell window the sea floor drops to 169 m, shoaling steadily over the last kilometres. Alongside the bank the survey finds a channel, 360 m against 169 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 51.1

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 135° with 56% open water around it. Friendly morning wind 27% of days. Mean peak period 8.5 s. Days over 3 m: 0%. On its best tenth of days it reaches 1.7 m, with a peak period of 10 s. Mellow days (0.4 to 1.2 m): 40%. Months that work: 12 of 12. Coordinates -9.526, -35.583 (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 Brazil (2025, United States = 1.00) 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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