San Miguel - Rabo de Peixe Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the variation of swells directed at San Miguel - Rabo de Peixe over a normal January, based on 3364 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 San Miguel - Rabo de Peixe. In this particular case the best grid node is 22 km away (14 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 24% of the time. 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 NW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from San Miguel - Rabo de Peixe and offshore. We group 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 good for surfing at San Miguel - Rabo de Peixe, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical January, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at San Miguel - Rabo de Peixe run for about 76% of the time.

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