Glencairn Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at Glencairn through an average October and is based upon 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Glencairn. In this particular case the best grid node is 38 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 85% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Glencairn 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 Glencairn, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Glencairn run for about 15% of the time.

read more