Statistiques de Surf de Petacalco

This chart describes the range of swells directed at Petacalco through a typical August. It is based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Petacalco, and at Petacalco the best grid node is 50 km away (31 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 0.3% of the time. Green and yellow represent 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 often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Petacalco and away from the coast. 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 clean enough to surf at Petacalco, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average August, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Petacalco run for about 100% of the time.

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