Statistiques de Surf de Praia da Areia Branca

The graph illustrates the range of swells directed at Praia da Areia Branca over a normal June. It is based on 3506 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Praia da Areia Branca. In this particular case the best grid node is 28 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 24% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Praia da Areia Branca and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Praia da Areia Branca, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical June, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Praia da Areia Branca run for about 76% of the time.

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