Sandbar Surf Stats

This picture shows the combination of swells directed at Sandbar through a typical May. It is based on 3422 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Sandbar. In this particular case the best grid node is 12 km away (7 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 were forecast only 12% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and biggest 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 was forecast. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Sandbar 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Sandbar, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Sandbar run for about 88% of the time.

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