Fort de St Germain Des Vaux Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the combination of swells directed at Fort de St Germain Des Vaux over a normal August. It is based on 3224 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Fort de St Germain Des Vaux, and at Fort de St Germain Des Vaux the best grid node is 25 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 were forecast 57% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate 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 commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fort de St Germain Des Vaux 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Fort de St Germain Des Vaux, 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 August, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Fort de St Germain Des Vaux run for about 43% of the time.

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