Palos Verde - Bluff Cove Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at Palos Verde - Bluff Cove through a typical August. It is based on 2976 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 best grid node based on what we know about Palos Verde - Bluff Cove, and at Palos Verde - Bluff Cove the best grid node is 34 km away (21 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 occurred only 70% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Palos Verde - Bluff Cove and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Palos Verde - Bluff Cove, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average August, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Palos Verde - Bluff Cove run for about 1.0% of the time.

read more