East Wittering Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at East Wittering over a normal February and is based upon 2208 NWW3 model predictions since 2009 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about East Wittering. In the case of East Wittering, the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 47% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from East Wittering and offshore. 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 good for surfing at East Wittering, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical February, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at East Wittering run for about 14% of the time.

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