Praia do Castello Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at Praia do Castello 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Praia do Castello. In the case of Praia do Castello, the best grid node is 28 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 18% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Praia do Castello and away from the coast. We lump these in 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 clean enough to surf at Praia do Castello, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Praia do Castello run for about 82% of the time.

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