Gansey Surf Stats

This picture describes the combination of swells directed at Gansey through a typical September. It is based on 2639 NWW3 model predictions since 2008 (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 Gansey. In this particular case the best grid node is 67 km away (42 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 happened 55% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest 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 was forecast. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Gansey 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Gansey, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Gansey run for about 45% of the time.

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