Playa de Galizano Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at Playa de Galizano through an average November. It is based on 3347 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Playa de Galizano. In the case of Playa de Galizano, the best grid node is 15 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 5% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa de Galizano and away from the coast. We combine 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 clean enough to surf at Playa de Galizano, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical November, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Playa de Galizano run for about 76% of the time.

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