Scotts Bay Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the combination of swells directed at Scotts Bay over a normal May, based on 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 best grid node based on what we know about Scotts Bay, and at Scotts Bay the best grid node is 17 km away (11 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred only 28% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was S, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Scotts Bay and out to sea. We combine these 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 clean enough to surf at Scotts Bay, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Scotts Bay run for about 72% of the time.

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