La Caracola Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at La Caracola through an average August. It is based on 3582 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about La Caracola. In the case of La Caracola, the best grid node is 19 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 1.6% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from La Caracola and out to sea. 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 surfable at La Caracola, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical August, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at La Caracola run for about 62% of the time.

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