Statistiques de Surf de Petacalco

This picture shows the combination of swells directed at Petacalco over a normal September. It is based on 3337 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Petacalco. In the case of Petacalco, the best grid node is 50 km away (31 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 occurred only 0.5% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Petacalco and offshore. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Petacalco, 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 September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Petacalco run for about 100% of the time.

read more