Ile d'Oleron - St Denis Surf Stats

The graph shows the variation of swells directed at Ile d'Oleron - St Denis through an average 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 best grid node based on what we know about Ile d'Oleron - St Denis. In the case of Ile d'Oleron - St Denis, the best grid node is 11 km away (7 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 were forecast only 17% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, 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 biggest spokes, was W, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the N. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Ile d'Oleron - St Denis and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Ile d'Oleron - St Denis, 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 surfable waves at Ile d'Oleron - St Denis run for about 2.0% of the time.

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