Playa do Carreiro Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the combination of swells directed at Playa do Carreiro through a typical July. It is based on 3720 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Playa do Carreiro. In this particular case the best grid node is 14 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred only 4% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents 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 dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa do Carreiro and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Playa do Carreiro, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Playa do Carreiro run for about 96% of the time.

read more