Diego Garcia Island • Statistics for December

December: Early Season Promise

December brings a return of the good stuff. The ideal wind statistic climbs back to 38 percent, and the wind rose begins to favour the offshore quadrant once again: WNW (12.4%), W (9.6%), WSW (7.5%) and NW (7.3%) combine for over 36% of the observations, while the trades are still present but far less aggressive than in October. Average swell height drops to around 5ft (1.6m), with a period of 11.0s, and while the dominant directions remain SSE (40.6%) and S (28.1%), there is more spread through SSW (9.7%), SE (12.3%) and even WSW (2.1%) and W (1.5%). The wave heights cluster in the 3-8ft (1-2.5m) range, with the bulk of SSE and S energy in the fun-to-punchy 5-6ft (1.5-2m) class. Water temperature is a warm 28.9°C, air temps sit around 27.4°C and rainfall picks up to 7.26mm/day. December is when Diego Garcia transitions from the trade-wind slog into the cleaner, more promising surf window of the northern-hemisphere winter.