East Wittering Surf Stats

The figure describes the combination of swells directed at East Wittering through an average July. It is based on 2480 NWW3 model predictions since 2008 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about East Wittering. In the case of East Wittering, the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened 40% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WSW (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from East Wittering and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at East Wittering, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at East Wittering run for about 3% of the time.

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