San Miguel - Populo Surf Stats

The graph shows the combination of swells directed at San Miguel - Populo through a typical April and is based upon 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about San Miguel - Populo. In this particular case the best grid node is 29 km away (18 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred only 62% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from San Miguel - Populo and offshore. 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 San Miguel - Populo, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at San Miguel - Populo run for about 31% of the time.

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