Arinaga Surf Stats

This chart describes the range of swells directed at Arinaga through an average July and is based upon 3720 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Arinaga, and at Arinaga the best grid node is 42 km away (26 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 happened only 3% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was N (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Arinaga and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Arinaga, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Arinaga run for about 12% of the time.

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