Galion Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at Galion over a normal June. It is based on 3266 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Galion, and at Galion the best grid node is 8 km away (5 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These were forecast only 1.1% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. 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 biggest spokes, was E (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Galion and away from the coast. 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 Galion, 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 June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Galion run for about 99% of the time.

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