Port Louis Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Port Louis over a normal August. It is based on 3590 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Port Louis, and at Port Louis the best grid node is 9 km away (6 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 occurred only 31% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Port Louis and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Port Louis, you can view an alternative 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 good for surfing waves at Port Louis run for about 41% of the time.

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