Rameswaram Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at Rameswaram through a typical October. It is based on 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Rameswaram, and at Rameswaram the best grid node is 46 km away (29 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 3% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Rameswaram and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Rameswaram, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Rameswaram run for about 21% of the time.

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