Ocean Beach Surf Stats

This chart shows the range of swells directed at Ocean Beach through an average July, based on 2976 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Ocean Beach, and at Ocean Beach the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing 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 only 25% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either 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 biggest spokes, was W (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Ocean Beach 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 good for surfing at Ocean Beach, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Ocean Beach run for about 75% of the time.

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