Surf Forecast Surf Report
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El Faro Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

The figure illustrates the variation of swells directed at El Faro through a typical March and is based upon 2964 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about El Faro. In this particular case the best grid node is 56 km away (35 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 77% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate 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 most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W, whereas the the most common wind blows from the N. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Faro and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at El Faro, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average March, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at El Faro run for about 23% of the time.

Also see El Faro wind stats

Compare El Faro with another surf break

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