San Vicente Rivermouth Surf Stats

The graph shows the combination of swells directed at San Vicente Rivermouth over a normal April, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about San Vicente Rivermouth. In this particular case the best grid node is 15 km away (9 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred only 14% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from San Vicente Rivermouth and offshore. We combine these 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 clean enough to surf at San Vicente Rivermouth, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at San Vicente Rivermouth run for about 39% of the time.

read more