Perranuthnoe Surf Stats

This chart shows the combination of swells directed at Perranuthnoe through an average October, based on 3223 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Perranuthnoe, and at Perranuthnoe the best grid node is 13 km away (8 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 20% 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 frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Perranuthnoe and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Perranuthnoe, 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 clean enough to surf waves at Perranuthnoe run for about 80% of the time.

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