Casas Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Casas through an average June. It is based on 3266 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Casas. In the case of Casas, the best grid node is 33 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 38% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Casas and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Casas, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical June, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Casas run for about 62% of the time.

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