Barra Velha Surf Stats

This picture describes the combination of swells directed at Barra Velha over a normal May. It is based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Barra Velha. In the case of Barra Velha, the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 18% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Barra Velha and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Barra Velha, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Barra Velha run for about 82% of the time.

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