Playa Tenrero Surf Stats

The graph describes the range of swells directed at Playa Tenrero through an average October. It is based on 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Playa Tenrero. In this particular case the best grid node is 43 km away (27 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 10% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa Tenrero 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 good for surfing at Playa Tenrero, 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 October, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Playa Tenrero run for about 90% of the time.

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