Stent Road Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the variation of swells directed at Stent Road through a typical June, based on 3266 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Stent Road, and at Stent Road the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes 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 occurred only 16% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Stent Road and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Stent Road, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average June, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Stent Road run for about 84% of the time.

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