Old Orchard Beach Surf Stats

This picture shows the combination of swells directed at Old Orchard Beach through an average November, based on 2867 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Old Orchard Beach. In this particular case the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 46% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest 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 most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Old Orchard Beach and offshore. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Old Orchard Beach, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical November, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Old Orchard Beach run for about 54% of the time.

read more