Old Woman Island - South Side Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at Old Woman Island - South Side over a normal August, based on 2976 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Old Woman Island - South Side. In this particular case the best grid node is 41 km away (25 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 happened only 28% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Old Woman Island - South Side and offshore. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Old Woman Island - South Side, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical August, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Old Woman Island - South Side run for about 72% of the time.

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