Carrapateira Surf Stats

This picture describes the range of swells directed at Carrapateira through an average April, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Carrapateira. In the case of Carrapateira, the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 7% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Carrapateira and out to sea. 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 Carrapateira, 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 April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Carrapateira run for about 93% of the time.

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