Tilapa Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the combination of swells directed at Tilapa over a normal July. It is based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Tilapa, and at Tilapa the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 0% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Tilapa and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Tilapa, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Tilapa run for about 100% of the time.

read more