Cloud 9 Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the combination of swells directed at Cloud 9 through a typical May, based on 3406 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 Cloud 9. In the case of Cloud 9, the best grid node is 28 km away (17 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 3% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Cloud 9 and out to sea. We group 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 Cloud 9, 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 May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Cloud 9 run for about 97% of the time.

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