Arna Plage Surf Stats

The figure describes the combination of swells directed at Arna Plage through an average June, based on 3505 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Arna Plage. In the case of Arna Plage, the best grid node is 14 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 6% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Arna Plage 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Arna Plage, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Arna Plage run for about 94% of the time.

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