Crazy Left Surf Stats

This picture describes the variation of swells directed at Crazy Left through a typical November. It is based on 3347 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Crazy Left. In the case of Crazy Left, the best grid node is 7 km away (4 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 83% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, 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 Crazy Left 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Crazy Left, 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 Crazy Left run for about 17% of the time.

read more