El Faro (Puerto Villamil) Surf Stats

The figure describes the variation of swells directed at El Faro (Puerto Villamil) through an average June. It is based on 2786 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about El Faro (Puerto Villamil). In the case of El Faro (Puerto Villamil), the best grid node is 5 km away (3 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 0% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each 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 biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Faro (Puerto Villamil) and away from the coast. 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 surfable at El Faro (Puerto Villamil), you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at El Faro (Puerto Villamil) run for about 86% of the time.

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