Surf Forecast Surf Report
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El Playon Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

This image illustrates the combination of swells directed at El Playon through a typical March. It is based on 3460 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about El Playon, and at El Playon the best grid node is 16 km away (10 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without 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 0.8% of the time. Green and yellow show 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 frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Playon and out to sea. We lump these in 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 good for surfing at El Playon, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average March, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at El Playon run for about 99% of the time.

Also see El Playon wind stats

Compare El Playon with another surf break

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