Fishtraps Surf Stats

This chart shows the range of swells directed at Fishtraps over a normal November. It is based on 2867 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Fishtraps. In this particular case the best grid node is 19 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 28% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fishtraps and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Fishtraps, 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 November, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Fishtraps run for about 65% of the time.

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