Dooagh Surf Stats

The graph describes the variation of swells directed at Dooagh through an average October. It is based on 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Dooagh. In this particular case the best grid node is 25 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 39% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Dooagh and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Dooagh, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Dooagh run for about 61% of the time.

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