Manhattan 26th street Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Manhattan 26th street over a normal April. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Manhattan 26th street. In this particular case the best grid node is 43 km away (27 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 illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 45% 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 occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Manhattan 26th street 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Manhattan 26th street, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Manhattan 26th street run for about 55% of the time.

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