Playa Blanca Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at Playa Blanca over a normal April and is based upon 3120 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Playa Blanca, and at Playa Blanca the best grid node is 250 km away (155 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 happened only 1.1% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa Blanca 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 clean enough to surf at Playa Blanca, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Playa Blanca run for about 99% of the time.

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