Chipiona Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Chipiona over a normal May, based on 3406 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Chipiona. In the case of Chipiona, the best grid node is 27 km away (17 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred 29% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was W (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Chipiona and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Chipiona, 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 May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Chipiona run for about 71% of the time.

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