Ledge Point Surf Stats

The figure shows the combination of swells directed at Ledge Point through a typical June, based on 3506 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Ledge Point. In this particular case the best grid node is 29 km away (18 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 1.9% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, 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 longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Ledge Point and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Ledge Point, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average June, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Ledge Point run for about 98% of the time.

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