Mewslade Bay Surf Stats

This chart shows the combination of swells directed at Mewslade Bay over a normal July. It is based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Mewslade Bay. In the case of Mewslade Bay, the best grid node is 16 km away (10 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened 24% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Mewslade Bay and offshore. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Mewslade Bay, 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 July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Mewslade Bay run for about 76% of the time.

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