El Arenal Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the range of swells directed at El Arenal over a normal August, based on 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about El Arenal, and at El Arenal the best grid node is 18 km away (11 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 15% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was N, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Arenal and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at El Arenal, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical August, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at El Arenal run for about 85% of the time.

read more