Horse Trails Surf Stats

The graph describes the variation of swells directed at Horse Trails through a typical October, based on 3471 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 Horse Trails, and at Horse Trails the best grid node is 48 km away (30 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 7% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Horse Trails 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 clean enough to surf at Horse Trails, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Horse Trails run for about 89% of the time.

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