San Carpoforo Creek Surf Stats

This image shows the combination of swells directed at San Carpoforo Creek through a typical June. It is based on 3266 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about San Carpoforo Creek, and at San Carpoforo Creek the best grid node is 33 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 66% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from San Carpoforo Creek and out to sea. We lump these in 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 Carpoforo Creek, 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 June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at San Carpoforo Creek run for about 34% of the time.

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