St Augustine Beach Pier Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the range of swells directed at St Augustine Beach Pier over a normal November and is based upon 3347 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about St Augustine Beach Pier. In this particular case the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 happened only 13% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from St Augustine Beach Pier and away from the coast. 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 good for surfing at St Augustine Beach Pier, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical November, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at St Augustine Beach Pier run for about 87% of the time.

read more