Infernillo Surf Stats

This picture describes the range of swells directed at Infernillo through a typical April. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 Infernillo. In this particular case the best grid node is 43 km away (27 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 11% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Infernillo and offshore. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Infernillo, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Infernillo run for about 89% of the time.

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