Playa de Tagle Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Playa de Tagle through a typical November and is based upon 3347 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (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 Playa de Tagle. In this particular case the best grid node is 11 km away (7 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 happened only 6% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the largest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Playa de Tagle and offshore. 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 surfable at Playa de Tagle, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average November, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Playa de Tagle run for about 94% of the time.

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