St Jean de Doigt Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at St Jean de Doigt through an average April. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about St Jean de Doigt, and at St Jean de Doigt the best grid node is 37 km away (23 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 13% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from St Jean de Doigt and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at St Jean de Doigt, 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 St Jean de Doigt run for about 57% of the time.

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