El Chorro Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the combination of swells directed at El Chorro through a typical August and is based upon 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about El Chorro. In this particular case the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 46% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows 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 dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was S, 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 El Chorro and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at El Chorro, 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 August, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at El Chorro run for about 54% of the time.

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