El Medano Surf Stats

This image shows the combination of swells directed at El Medano through a typical May and is based upon 2838 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about El Medano. In the case of El Medano, the best grid node is 6 km away (4 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 32% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Medano and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at El Medano, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at El Medano run for about 2.0% of the time.

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