El Camotal Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at El Camotal through a typical September, based on 2880 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about El Camotal. In this particular case the best grid node is 35 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 100% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was N, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Camotal 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at El Camotal, 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 September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at El Camotal run for about 0% of the time.

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