Three hurricanes were spinning in the Pacific at the same time last week, the first time that has happened in eleven years. The biggest of the three was a Category 5 and the energy from the hurricanes sent over twelve foot waves to Zuma.
The Hurricane that sent the most energy to Malibu this time was called Marie, and Malibu has heard that name before.
Twelve years ago a hurricane named Marie gave this coast the best day of surf everyone here still talks about, Big Wednesday. And it feels like that we've just been comparing every swell against Big Wednesday since. That was until Marie 2.0.
Big Wednesday was just one day, which is why it is called Wednesday. This time, however we had something arguably better. Although the waves we're not as big, it was an epic 4 day long gauntlet of amazing surf rivaling it's predesessor.
The Legendary Four Days
The National Weather Service had a High Surf Advisory and a Coastal Flood Advisory running from 6 a.m. Saturday through 11 p.m. Tuesday, covering Los Angeles and Ventura counties. It built through Saturday, went to work on Sunday, and held most of its size through Labor Day Monday. The Los Angeles Times reported waves at Zuma breaking as high as twelve feet over the weekend.
What people kept saying about it was not the size. It was that it would not quit.
"Normally the swell will last one or two days, but it just keeps going. Some of the best, just consistent."
said one surfer talking to FOX 11 on Monday, and it is the whole story in two sentences.
Then Malibu got a gift nobody asked for. Marie dragged tropical moisture up the coast with her, and Sunday brought rare September rain and enough lightning that the beaches closed for the afternoon (meaning less surfers out in the water and more waves for the die hards!). Rain in Southern California empties a beach parking lot faster than almost anything. The people who went out anyway found the best waves of the year with nobody on them.
"As a surfer it's the best, no one's going out because it's raining. It's not crowded, scored big time."
Anyone who has ever tried to catch a wave at First Point on a good day understands exactly how those conditions are.
And then there was the tide, which is the part most people missed. Labor Day Monday brought a 7.04 foot high tide at 7:30 in the evening, three quarters of a foot above what the tables predicted and a foot higher than anything the 2014 swell ever landed on. Big waves on an ordinary tide usually crash far before they reach the shoreline. Big waves on top of seven feet of water get into parking lots and low stretches of road, which is exactly what happened. Countless videos surfaced online of huge surf washing into parking lots or crashing onto the PCH.
How Two Hurricanes Made The Swell Last
On September 3 a NOAA satellite caught three hurricanes turning at once between Baja and Hawaii. Karina, Lowell and Marie. Lowell was the monster, briefly a Category 5 with winds near 160 miles an hour. Karina got to Category 4. Marie, the one that mattered most to us, never got past Category 2 yet still brought Malibu epic surf.
The reason it lasted is Karina. While Marie threw swell at us from the south southeast, Karina was sitting further southwest and pushing a second, smaller pulse in from a different angle. Two storms, two directions, overlapping across the same few days. On top of that, Marie kept tracking northwest as the weekend went on, so her own angle swung from south southeast on Friday to almost due south by Monday.
So the coast was never getting the same wave twice. Spots that were flat on Friday were working by Monday. That is why it kept feeling new for four days instead of peaking once and dying, and it is the practical difference between this swell and the one in 2014.
Big Wednesday, and Why This One Felt Different
August 27, 2014 was a different freak of nature. That Marie peaked as a Category 5 with a far wider wind field, and Surfline did something it almost never does and issued a public safety alert for Southern California.
It came in from deep in the southeast, which is exactly the direction Malibu's points are aimed. Instead of hitting the beach head on and collapsing all at once, the swell bent around the headland at Surfrider and ran along the shape of the point. Waves that stood up at Third Point kept going through Second and all the way into First, which almost never happens.
As for the name, both storms got it as a delightful coincidence. The Pacific recycles its hurricane names every six years, so the 2026 list is the 2014 list. The two biggest hurricanes we got in the last 11 years just fittingly happened to share the same name.
Why Malibu Cares So Much About a South Swell
Most of California faces west. Malibu does not, and that one fact explains almost everything about why this swell created so much stoke in the surfing community here.
The coast turns and runs east to west, so the points at Surfrider look south and southeast into open water. Winter swell out of the Gulf of Alaska arrives from the northwest and mostly slides past Malibu's surf breaks. Summer and early fall swell out of the south hits them head on. A hurricane sitting off Baja in September is aimed almost perfectly at us in a way it is not aimed at the rest of the state.
Which Malibu Areas Have the Best Surf?
A house with a working wave in front of it is a genuinely scarce thing.
There are only so many stretches of California pointed the right direction, and Malibu owns a disproportionate share of them. The Colony and Malibu Road sit within sight of the points. Latigo Beach has its own right hand point that lights up on exactly this kind of summer south. Point Dume shelters Paradise Cove from the northwest and takes the south swell on its western side. Broad Beach and Carbon Beach each meet the water at their own unique angle.
The beach orientation is the most misunderstood thing about Malibu. It decides how much sun a deck gets throughout the year, and it decides whether a weekend like this one arrives as a spectacle out your window or as an ordinary Tuesday. Two houses three miles apart can have completely different relationships with the same ocean on the same afternoon.
Talking to a Malibu Real Estate Agent About Buying Your Surf Home
If you are looking at a home along this coastline, the useful details are the ones you only learn by being here. Which streets look at which break, how a stretch of sand behaves through the seasons, and how much surf you could expect to get each year in your front yard.
Have a look at what is currently available in Malibu, or get in touch and we can help walk you through every beach and beachfront neighborhood in Malibu that best suits your needs.
Sources
- FOX 11 Los Angeles, "Hurricane Marie remnants bring record rain, high surf to Southern California," September 7, 2026. foxla.com
- Los Angeles Times, coverage of Tropical Storm Marie's impacts, September 7, 2026. latimes.com
- National Weather Service Los Angeles/Oxnard, High Surf and Coastal Flood Advisories, September 2026. weather.gov/lox
- National Hurricane Center, advisories and preliminary best track data for Hurricanes Karina, Lowell and Marie, 2026. nhc.noaa.gov
- National Hurricane Center, Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Marie, August 2014. nhc.noaa.gov
- National Hurricane Center, tropical cyclone naming and the six-year name rotation. nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames
- NOAA Tides and Currents, Santa Monica station 9410840, observed water levels, September 2026. tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov
- NOAA NESDIS, satellite imagery of the eastern Pacific, September 2026. nesdis.noaa.gov
- Surfline, "Anatomy of a Swell: Hurricane Marie, August 2014." surfline.com