This image shows only the swells directed at Playa de Bastiagueiros 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 illustrates the largest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSE. 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 6% of the time, equivalent to 5 days. Expect open water swells to exceed >3m (>10ft) 6% of the time (5 days). Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds, and given the fact that Playa de Bastiagueiros is very sheltered from open water swells, we calculate that clean surf can be found at Playa de Bastiagueiros about 6% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 13% of the time. This is means that we expect 17 days with waves in a typical northern hemisphere autumn, of which 5 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.