Statistiques de Surf de Refugio State Beach

The graph illustrates the variation of swells directed at Refugio State Beach through an average September. It is based on 3360 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Refugio State Beach, and at Refugio State Beach the best grid node is 39 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram describes 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 occurred only 18% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Refugio State Beach and away from the coast. We lump these in 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 good for surfing at Refugio State Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical September, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Refugio State Beach run for about 65% of the time.

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