Surf Forecast Surf Report
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Faial Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

The graph shows the variation of swells directed at Faial through an average March, based on 2964 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 Faial, and at Faial the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred only 7% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, 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 biggest spokes, was NNW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the N. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Faial and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Faial, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical March, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Faial run for about 90% of the time.

Also see Faial wind stats

Compare Faial with another surf break

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