Live wave height, wind and water temp — plus an 8-day forecast scored 0–100 for every sport.
Photo: Andrew Nash from Vienna, Austria / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
Today at Playa de Los Lances: Excellent for windsurfing — 85/100 for intermediate level. Wind 9 kn W · Waves 0.7 m, 16 s · Tide -0.6 to -0.1 m. Best window around 16:00 UTC. Today's conditions at Playa de Los Lances: 0.7m waves with moderate onshore wind. Kite Foiling looks Epic! in the afternoon, with Wing Foiling also worth considering. Water temperature is 21°C / 70°F.
Forecast updated · ShorSense™
Today plus the next two days are free for everyone — scored in 3-hour windows, just like the app. The full 8-day forecast lives in the 4Shor app.
Playa de Los Lances faces SW, open to the prevailing westerlies, so the wind arrives off the water rather than filtered through the land — the clean, steady flow windsurfing wants, and the reason gusts here are sea breezes rather than land turbulence.
Today's wind is cross-onshore at 9 kn. Leaning onshore, which is the forgiving side for windsurfing: you can hold a line along the beach and anything that goes wrong still drifts you in.
Over the published window Playa de Los Lances clears 60/100 for windsurfing at every ability from Beginner to Expert — an unusually broad spot, which normally means a range of conditions rather than one narrow sweet spot. Today, 11 of 11 daylight hours clear that line at Intermediate.
Among the 31 scored spots within reach today, Playa de Los Lances ranks 2nd for windsurfing. The order changes by discipline: the same conditions that put a spot top for one sport can drop it down the list for another.
Satellite-derived bathymetry with 10 m pixels and 10 cm vertical resolution out to ~40 m depth. The shape of the seabed is what determines where and how waves break.
Most apps run a single global model at 9–25 km. We blend regional NWP from national meteorological offices at 1.3–2 km — UK Met Office UKV, Météo-France AROME HD, ItaliaMeteo ICON-2I — with ECMWF IFS for the 8-day horizon. Finer resolution means the sea breeze, cliff funnelling and bay shadowing that changes everything for a session.
A nearshore wave model propagates the spectrum across the bathymetric mesh — modelling refraction, shoaling, dissipation, focusing and breaking as it goes. Most apps stop at swell + wind. We go further.
10 sport models × 4 ability levels weight wave height, period, wind, tide and breaking conditions differently — calibrated against ridden sessions so the scores mean what they say.
A long, fine-white-sand beach on the Strait of Gibraltar, a major kite/windsurf spot, mostly sandy but with rocks at low tide on the south side. Westerly wind brings side-onshore waves; easterly Levante brings strong, gusty side-offshore flat-to-choppy water. River-fed lagoons give flatwater at high tide. Kitesurfing is banned in the interior lagoon. The south section is bathers-only in summer, kite/windsurf zoned north. Lifeguards operate daily in summer.
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Get the free Playa de Los Lances widgetToday's conditions for Playa de Los Lances are free. Unlock the full 8-day forecast and per-sport alerts that ping you when this location is about to fire. more than 2,500 European locations, scored from the seabed up.
Wind at Playa de Los Lances today: 9 kn W (gusting 22 kn). Wind direction relative to the shore affects windsurfing conditions significantly — offshore winds produce cleaner, glassier surfaces while onshore winds add chop. These are daily averages; the 4Shor app shows hourly detail.
Waves at Playa de Los Lances today: 0.7 m, 16 s period from N, crumbling character. 4Shor derives nearshore wave conditions from ECMWF IFS 9-km atmospheric data and the IBI regional ocean model, updated hourly.
The best window for windsurfing at Playa de Los Lances today is around 16:00 UTC, when conditions score 85/100 for intermediate level. Conditions can shift by the hour — the 4Shor app shows the full 24-hour score chart.
For beginners, Playa de Los Lances scores 82/100 today for surfing — Excellent. A score of 65–79 is Good for a beginner; 80+ is Excellent (90+ is Epic!); below 45 the session is usually not worth it. 4Shor scores every location across Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced and Expert levels.
Playa de Los Lances is scored for Surfing, Windsurfing, Kite Surfing, Kite Foiling, Wing Foiling, E-Foiling, Paddleboarding, Swimming, Kayaking, Canoeing in the 4Shor forecast system. Conditions are rated Beginner through Expert for each sport, updated every hour, so you always know whether the session is worth the drive.
Playa de Los Lances is a coastal location near Tarifa in Spain. It is one of more than 2,500 European water-sport locations scored daily by 4Shor.
4Shor's ShorSense™ system combines satellite-derived seafloor mapping, nearshore wave models, wind and tide data to generate a hyper-local forecast. At Playa de Los Lances, conditions are scored hourly on a 0–100 scale for each sport and ability level. A score of 80+ means Excellent (90+ Epic!); 65–79 is Good; below 45 the session is usually not worth the drive.
Questions about 4Shor itself — accuracy, pricing, the free trial — are answered on the FAQ page.
