La Yerbabuena Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at La Yerbabuena through a typical November. It is based on 3345 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about La Yerbabuena, and at La Yerbabuena the best grid node is 20 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 78% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest 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 largest spokes, was W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from La Yerbabuena and offshore. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at La Yerbabuena, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average November, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at La Yerbabuena run for about 12% of the time.

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