Resolution criteria

This market will resolve to YES if, at any point between the market's creation and November 15, 2026, at 11:59 PM Pacific Time (PT), a significant wave height of 10.0 feet (3.05 meters) or higher is recorded off the San Mateo Coast.

The primary source of truth is NOAA NDBC Station 46012 (Half Moon Bay, CA), located at 37.356 N, 122.881 W.

• Source URL: NDBC Station 46012 Real Time Data

• Metric: "Significant Wave Height" (WVHT) must register at least 10.0 ft (when toggled to English units) or at least 3.05 meters (on the metric display) in any hourly or sub-hourly reading.

Fallback and Edge Cases:

• Buoy Outage: If Station 46012 is offline, decommissioned, or fails to transmit data during a major swell event, the creator may refer to the official retrospective data once updated by the NDBC. Alternatively, data from nearby stations such as CDIP Station 142 / NDBC 46237 (San Francisco Bar) or NDBC Station 46026 (San Francisco) may be used as a proxy, provided there is reasonable consensus among local surf forecasts (e.g., Surfline) that equivalent or greater wave heights reached the San Mateo Coast.

• If no official buoy data is available for the entire period and no alternative reliable database can confirm the wave heights, the market will resolve to N/A.

Background

The San Mateo County coastline, which includes Pacifica, Half Moon Bay, and the famous big-wave break Mavericks, is highly exposed to powerful North Pacific swells. September through November marks the transition into the West Coast's winter swell season, during which strong low-pressure systems in the Gulf of Alaska regularly send large, long-period waves toward Northern and Central California.

The primary instrument tracking these conditions is NOAA's NDBC Station 46012, situated roughly 24 nautical miles west-southwest of San Francisco. It sits in deep water (over 200 meters) and measures "significant wave height," which is defined as the average height of the highest one-third of all waves measured during a specific sampling period. A 10-foot significant wave height at this outer buoy translates to substantial, highly visible surf along the adjacent beaches and reefs.

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