California Trailer Park Surf Stats

The graph illustrates the variation of swells directed at California Trailer Park through an average September, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about California Trailer Park. In the case of California Trailer Park, the best grid node is 35 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 occurred only 73% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from California Trailer Park 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 good for surfing at California Trailer Park, 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 September, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at California Trailer Park run for about 14% of the time.

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