The biggest south swell in 25 years came up from Tahiti and hit Hawaii on July 17, 2022. Ala Moana was closing out. You could see the 20 ft waves rolling in from the street! (RIP Coolio who passed away a couple months later)

How significant was it?
This is an excellent description from www.hawaiiansouthshore.com :

By Saturday evening, it was clear that this was no ordinary swell. Barbers Point buoy hit 6.5 feet at 21 seconds, Bowls was maxed out, Hawaii Kai was third reefing (but super windy), and reports from the Westside were all sorts of epic.

We knew that the swell was likely to peak overnight and early Sunday morning, but we didn’t know if it would get any bigger than it already was. But early on Sunday the buoys went apocalyptic—8.5 feet at 20 seconds, easily the biggest reading on the South Shore since at least 1995. The buoy at Bowls got blown away, Waikiki was huge lines of white water stacked to the horizon, a handful of guys were out at Castles trying to connect twomile lines to Canoes (like Duke Kahanamoku did in 1917), and a number of the North Shore’s gnarliest chargers were surfing a legitimate 12 to 15foot outer reef—within view of Honolulu!

It turns out “historic” was the perfect descriptor for this swell, which ended up lasting a full five days. There was small, background, 23secondperiod swell on Friday, Saturday was bigger than anything in 20 years, Sunday was even bigger and legitimately XL, Monday was still six to eight foot and would have qualified as the biggest day of the summer pretty much any other year in the past decade, and Tuesday was still three to four foot! This was literally the biggest South Shore swell since Hawaiian South Shore opened, so I hope you all had a chance to get out there and catch some bombs. Enjoy the normal sized longboarding on the forecast, but pray for surf. Here's hoping it’s not another 25 years before we see waves like this again!

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