Playa de Ondarreta - Pikua Surf Stats

The figure describes the variation of swells directed at Playa de Ondarreta - Pikua through an average October and is based upon 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Playa de Ondarreta - Pikua. In this particular case the best grid node is 22 km away (14 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 occurred only 7% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa de Ondarreta - Pikua and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Playa de Ondarreta - Pikua, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical October, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Playa de Ondarreta - Pikua run for about 20% of the time.

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