Abstract: The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) altimetry mission has been shown to resolve sub-10 km scale eddies due to its unprecedented low-instrument error and wide-swath. Recent studies have shown SWOT’s capability for deriving ocean circulation at tens of kilometer scales, which is a significant advancement in the state-of-the-art over conventional altimetry. The extend to which the small-scale sea surface height measurement is directly connected to ocean circulation at the smallest resolved scales is an ongoing topic of inquiry. We compare geostrophic currents from SWOT to surface currents observed off the northern California coast by a high-frequency radar (HFR) array in order to determine the extent to which SWOT-derived velocities are correlated with observed velocities. We also address the limitations of HFR and compare the spatial structure of circulation from SWOT and HFR to higher resolution sea surface temperature satellite observations.