El Toro Viejo Surf Stats

This image describes the combination of swells directed at El Toro Viejo through a typical October. It is based on 2976 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 El Toro Viejo, and at El Toro Viejo the best grid node is 18 km away (11 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 illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred only 0% of the time. Green and yellow show 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 often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Toro Viejo and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at El Toro Viejo, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at El Toro Viejo run for about 100% of the time.

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