Manuel Antonio Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at Manuel Antonio through an average September. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Manuel Antonio. In this particular case the best grid node is 38 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 0.1% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Manuel Antonio and away from the coast. We combine 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 Manuel Antonio, 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 September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Manuel Antonio run for about 100% of the time.

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