Playa Jaco Surf Stats

This chart describes the range of swells directed at Playa Jaco over a normal July, based on 3472 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 Playa Jaco, and at Playa Jaco the best grid node is 43 km away (27 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred only 0% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa Jaco 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 Jaco, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Playa Jaco run for about 77% of the time.

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