Bicas Surf Stats

This picture describes the variation of swells directed at Bicas over a normal October, 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Bicas, and at Bicas the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 happened only 7% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, 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 biggest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Bicas and away from the coast. 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 surfable at Bicas, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Bicas run for about 93% of the time.

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