Nigg Bay Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Nigg Bay through an average April, based on 2880 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Nigg Bay, and at Nigg Bay the best grid node is 15 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 57% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Nigg Bay and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Nigg Bay, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Nigg Bay run for about 43% of the time.

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