Turtles Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Turtles through a typical September, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Turtles. In this particular case the best grid node is 20 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 1.5% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Turtles and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Turtles, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Turtles run for about 98% of the time.

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