Praia da Vagueira Surf Stats

This chart describes the range of swells directed at Praia da Vagueira over a normal May, based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Praia da Vagueira. In this particular case the best grid node is 20 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 occurred only 0.6% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Praia da Vagueira and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Praia da Vagueira, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Praia da Vagueira run for about 99% of the time.

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