Rio Papagayo Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Rio Papagayo through an average February, based on 3120 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 best grid node based on what we know about Rio Papagayo, and at Rio Papagayo the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 were forecast only 1.3% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW, 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 Rio Papagayo 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 good for surfing at Rio Papagayo, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical February, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Rio Papagayo run for about 99% of the time.

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