Isla Santa Maria Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the combination of swells directed at Isla Santa Maria through a typical May and is based upon 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Isla Santa Maria. In this particular case the best grid node is 41 km away (25 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 0.1% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows largest 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 largest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Isla Santa Maria and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Isla Santa Maria, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Isla Santa Maria run for about 100% of the time.

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