Sacor Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the variation of swells directed at Sacor through a typical May and is based upon 3422 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Sacor. In the case of Sacor, the best grid node is 33 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 1.3% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Sacor and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Sacor, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Sacor run for about 99% of the time.

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