DEAR SURFERS – FALL 2025

Dear Surfers,

Two weeks ago the clocks rolled back, plummeting most of us in the northeast into what feel like shorter days and darker nights. Like the presence of the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil often signals that Spring is just around the corner, the transition away from daylight savings serves as its own marker for many in the Summertime Surf community—prompting us to keep an eye towards the winter ahead. For some, this may mean grand travel plans to tropical locales or chasing angry winter surf around the northern hemisphere, but for those staying put, the transition can feel less welcome.

In New Jersey, evening sessions in trunks turn to cold nights by the fire, and onshore sea breezes go from comfortably cool to bone-chilling almost overnight. While it can be easy to focus on the longer nights and daydream about escaping, the change of seasons brings opportunity at home, too.

As we approach the winter solstice and the Earth’s axis tips, the solar angle here hovers around 30 degrees, illuminating offshore lefts during sunset sessions and turning murky water into an autumnal yellow during backlit morning surfs. The familiar footprints of piping plovers, seen below the high tide line during the summer, give way to sights of cormorants diving beneath the fall surf as you paddle out. Afternoon southerlies lay down, and sand is transported up and down the coast with each storm, sending favored summer sandbars toward their winter hibernation and bringing back familiar haunts from years past.

In 2025, as we’re inundated with social media highlight reels and the pursuit of new places, attuning ourselves to the changing rhythms of the world around us can feel unfamiliar. This fall, as the light starts to fade, invite yourself to see our home with curious eyes and find the new in the old:

Wake up early and draw a high line in the morning glare;

Chase the fleeting hour of high-tide peaks at the jetty you’ve never surfed before;

and grab the dusty board off the rack that’s gone unridden for years;

Your next surf trip is just up the street.

Morgan Stierman, Operations Manager