El Cardon Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at El Cardon through a typical February. It is based on 2664 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about El Cardon. In the case of El Cardon, the best grid node is 45 km away (28 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These were forecast only 0.2% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Cardon and away from the coast. 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 surfable at El Cardon, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average February, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at El Cardon run for about 100% of the time.

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