Zancudo Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the combination of swells directed at Zancudo over a normal October. It is based on 3471 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 best grid node based on what we know about Zancudo. In the case of Zancudo, the best grid node is 40 km away (25 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 0% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Zancudo and offshore. We group 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 Zancudo, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical October, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Zancudo run for about 8% of the time.

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