Fire Island Surf Stats

This picture describes the variation of swells directed at Fire Island over a normal October and is based upon 3102 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Fire Island. In the case of Fire Island, the best grid node is 28 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 30% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either 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 longest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fire Island and away from the coast. We group these 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 Fire Island, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical October, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Fire Island run for about 70% of the time.

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