San Jose Island Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the range of swells directed at San Jose Island over a normal April. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about San Jose Island, and at San Jose Island the best grid node is 47 km away (29 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 happened only 9% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, 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 largest spokes, was SE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from San Jose Island and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at San Jose Island, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at San Jose Island run for about 91% of the time.

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