Sutton-on-Sea Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at Sutton-on-Sea through an average August. It is based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Sutton-on-Sea, and at Sutton-on-Sea the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened 68% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was N, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Sutton-on-Sea and away from the coast. We lump these in 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 clean enough to surf at Sutton-on-Sea, 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 August, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Sutton-on-Sea run for about 6% of the time.

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