Rockaway Surf Stats

The graph shows the variation of swells directed at Rockaway through a typical November, based on 3347 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 Rockaway. In the case of Rockaway, the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 33% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Rockaway and out to sea. We group 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 clean enough to surf at Rockaway, 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 November, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Rockaway run for about 67% of the time.

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