Playa Bruja Surf Stats

This picture describes the range of swells directed at Playa Bruja through a typical October, based on 3471 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 best grid node based on what we know about Playa Bruja, and at Playa Bruja the best grid node is 46 km away (29 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 0.8% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa Bruja and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Playa Bruja, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Playa Bruja run for about 99% of the time.

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