Long Beach Surf Stats

This picture shows the variation of swells directed at Long Beach through an average October, based on 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 Long Beach. In the case of Long Beach, the best grid node is 46 km away (29 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 56% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Long Beach and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Long Beach, 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 surfable waves at Long Beach run for about 44% of the time.

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