Playa Hermosa Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at Playa Hermosa through a typical May. It is based on 3358 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Playa Hermosa. In this particular case the best grid node is 44 km away (27 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 were forecast only 58% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa Hermosa and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Playa Hermosa, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Playa Hermosa run for about 42% of the time.

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