Santa Maria - Praia Formosa Surf Stats

This image illustrates the variation of swells directed at Santa Maria - Praia Formosa through an average September and is based upon 3360 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 Santa Maria - Praia Formosa. In the case of Santa Maria - Praia Formosa, the best grid node is 36 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 86% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was S, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Santa Maria - Praia Formosa and away from the coast. 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 surfable at Santa Maria - Praia Formosa, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Santa Maria - Praia Formosa run for about 14% of the time.

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