Burgos Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the range of swells directed at Burgos over a normal October. It is based on 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Burgos. In this particular case the best grid node is 9 km away (6 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 5% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Burgos 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Burgos, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical October, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Burgos run for about 95% of the time.

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