Belle Ile - Les Donnants Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at Belle Ile - Les Donnants through a typical August and is based upon 3582 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Belle Ile - Les Donnants. In this particular case the best grid node is 41 km away (25 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 55% 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 dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Belle Ile - Les Donnants and away from the coast. We combine these 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 good for surfing at Belle Ile - Les Donnants, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average August, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Belle Ile - Les Donnants run for about 45% of the time.

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