Just like everyone else, most of us East Coasters check the Surfline cams primarily to serve our own selfish, utilitarian purposes. We establish a perimeter for our day, do some realtime recon and some quick math (tide, distance, daylight, etc.) and commence with our beachhead, galvanized by 21st century intel. Once in a while, though, a live cam will reveal so much beauty and so much violence — nonstop action, prolonged carnage and world-class peaks detonating inside and outside the frame — the stream evokes our deepest, darkest voyeuristic tendencies. And it becomes an involuntary response. We’re sublimated. Hypnotized.

Never mind how the wind chop’s looking out front. Forget FOMO or neo-narcissism or any other quasi-condition that might steer us away, perhaps toward bigger and better things in our own lives. This is entertainment.

That’s what happened yesterday. Had you checked the South Beach, Miami, cam at any point, you either kept watching, or you kept checking it periodically. All day. Unless, of course, you were fortunate enough to be out there.

Live: South Beach Surf

“It was pumping,” chirps New Smyrna Beach, FL, pro Eric Geiselman. “I’ve never caught it like that down there, I’ve been skunked plenty of times, so I don’t really have anything to compare it to. But I saw everybody getting crazy waves. All my friends got crazy ones. Everyone who worked to get off for the predicted day and made it down there got crazy ones. Guys who couldn’t even surf were getting, like, accidental crazy ones. And of course, my brother got crazy ones, probably 25 hit waves for a banger edit.”

“South Beach was psycho!” adds Evan, one of yesterday’s standouts who also stood out during the last two benchmark Miami swell events of the last 10 years: Hurricane Sandy (2012) and the January 2019 storm. “I somehow have a special relationship with that place and seem to score every time I go down there. I would rate yesterday as the most perfect, most consistent South Beach I’ve ever surfed. Not the biggest, but the best, although all three swells seemed pretty similar. Sandy was unreal because there was two and a half days of it, which is pretty unheard of. And last year’s swell was the biggest I’ve ever seen it. But I would personally rate this as the best one for me, just because of the number of good waves I got, not to mention the countless good waves I saw other guys getting. I surfed all the way to the third lifeguard tower, so the whole beach was firing, which made the crowd mellower than usual.”

Winter’s been full of waves in the Atlantic — Surfline has a team of forecasters monitoring the activity nonstop. Who you gonna trust? Try Surfline Premium Free

So what provoked all this? If you answered, “the same system that had the rest of the East Coast hunkered down inside watching the South Beach cam and praying their pipes wouldn’t freeze,” congratulations, you are correct. Your prize: a Cam Rewind.

“A cold front moved through the state to kick off the week, bringing a frontal boundary that spawned the term ‘Winter Storm Iguana,’” explains Florida-based Surfline Forecaster, Mike Watson. “The storm started to take shape on Tuesday with additional fuel mixing in on Wednesday, thanks to frigid Canadian air being drawn along the eastern side of the Appalachians straight down to Florida. This air was cold enough for NWS Miami to issue a ‘Falling Iguana’ warning on Tuesday morning. The resulting storm cranked away just off the coast with gale-force winds aimed squarely at South Florida. The storm’s position also set up favorable NW winds for South Beach in the morning before a secondary swirl (that became clearly visible in satellite images) set up a period of slightly more favorable wind during the middle of the day. And that’s when our report reached its pinnacle: a rare, red ‘EPIC’ rating.”

“I had my kids til 11 and was freaking out to get down there, then I got down there at 1:30 and surfed for four and a half hours,” laughs former South Florida pro, Jensen Callaway, who’s been on top of nearly every swell that’s graced South Beach this century. “Honestly, when I walked up I was like, ‘What’s going on? There’s no one out [by South Beach standards]!’ There were lots of places in the lineup where you could paddle around and there’d be nobody near you.”

You Score? Enter O’Neill Wave of the Winter for U.S. East Coast South

“Everyone was getting barreled, and there was a good vibe out in the water,” Jensen continues. “Nobody was really barking. The Miami guys were all getting good ones: Dave Begley, Alex Casal, MJ Sizemore… Dustin Richardson was friggin’ killing it. Robbie McCormick was getting blown out of some sick ones, and of course, the Geiselmans were out there. It was definitely one of the better South Beach swells I’ve seen. Overhead, clean and manageable all day long.”

“The craziest part was how big the playing field was,” Eric finishes. “It wasn’t just the first peak, or those couple main peaks on the cam. I felt like down the beach went more square, but maybe wasn’t as consistent, while the peak by the jetty was almost over-wedged. So there was definitely some carnage. Everything was fall-out-of-the-sky technical. If you were getting the sets, you had to really know what you’re doing to ride ‘em. But it was still A-frames as far as you could see, up and down the beach.”

When’s the Next South Florida Swell? Read Our Expert Analysis

SWELL SIGNATURE:

Storm Location and Track: Formed just offshore the Florida coast near the Bahamas

Storm Wind: Peak winds at 39 knots with gusts to 50 knots at Canaveral 120-mile buoy

Storm Seas: Peak seas over 24 feet at Canaveral 20-mile buoy

Swell Travel Time: Six to ten hours