Playa Escondida Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at Playa Escondida through a typical May, based on 3230 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Playa Escondida. In the case of Playa Escondida, the best grid node is 39 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 0% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa Escondida and offshore. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Playa Escondida, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Playa Escondida run for about 55% of the time.

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