Conado-Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the range of swells directed at Conado-Beach through an average May and is based upon 3406 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Conado-Beach. In the case of Conado-Beach, the best grid node is 113 km away (70 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 happened only 31% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NNE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Conado-Beach and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Conado-Beach, 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 May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Conado-Beach run for about 12% of the time.

read more