Cowrie Hole Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at Cowrie Hole through an average November, based on 3347 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Cowrie Hole. In this particular case the best grid node is 21 km away (13 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 illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 25% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Cowrie Hole 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 surfable at Cowrie Hole, 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 November, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Cowrie Hole run for about 75% of the time.

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