Coos Bay-South Jetty Surf Stats

This image shows the range of swells directed at Coos Bay-South Jetty over a normal December. It is based on 3448 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Coos Bay-South Jetty. In the case of Coos Bay-South Jetty, the best grid node is 21 km away (13 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 1.0% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest 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 largest spokes, was W, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Coos Bay-South Jetty and away from the coast. We group these 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 good for surfing at Coos Bay-South Jetty, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical December, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Coos Bay-South Jetty run for about 99% of the time.

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