San Miguel - Ponta dos Mosteiros Surf Stats

This image illustrates the variation of swells directed at San Miguel - Ponta dos Mosteiros over a normal September. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about San Miguel - Ponta dos Mosteiros. In this particular case the best grid node is 20 km away (12 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 30% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from San Miguel - Ponta dos Mosteiros and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at San Miguel - Ponta dos Mosteiros, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at San Miguel - Ponta dos Mosteiros run for about 70% of the time.

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