Polkerris Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the range of swells directed at Polkerris over a normal April, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Polkerris. In the case of Polkerris, the best grid node is 40 km away (25 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 28% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each 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 longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Polkerris and offshore. We group 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 good for surfing at Polkerris, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Polkerris run for about 35% of the time.

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