Ruins Surf Stats

This picture shows the range of swells directed at Ruins over a normal July, based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Ruins. In this particular case the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 1.4% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the N. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Ruins and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Ruins, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Ruins run for about 99% of the time.

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