Surf Forecast Surf Report
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Rancho San Carlos Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Rancho San Carlos through a typical March, based on 3460 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Rancho San Carlos, and at Rancho San Carlos the best grid node is 20 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without 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 43% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Rancho San Carlos and out to sea. We lump these in 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 Rancho San Carlos, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average March, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Rancho San Carlos run for about 57% of the time.

Also see Rancho San Carlos wind stats

Compare Rancho San Carlos with another surf break

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