This image shows only the swells directed at Hotel Tecuan that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical northern hemisphere autumn. It is based on 5144 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast.

The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NNW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 26% of the time, equivalent to 24 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to occur in a normal northern hemisphere autumn but 1.8% of the time we expect swell in the range 2-3m (6.5-10ft) 1.8%, equivalent to (2 days). Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds, and given the fact that Hotel Tecuan is exposed to open water swells, we calculate that clean surf can be found at Hotel Tecuan about 26% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 29% of the time. This is means that we expect 50 days with waves in a typical northern hemisphere autumn, of which 24 days should be surfable.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.