San Augustin Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the range of swells directed at San Augustin over a normal September, based on 3360 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 best grid node based on what we know about San Augustin. In the case of San Augustin, the best grid node is 32 km away (20 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 happened only 0.9% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from San Augustin 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at San Augustin, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at San Augustin run for about 99% of the time.

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