Laredo Surf Stats

This picture shows the variation of swells directed at Laredo through an average May and is based upon 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Laredo, and at Laredo the best grid node is 10 km away (6 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 8% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Laredo 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Laredo, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Laredo run for about 13% of the time.

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