Stent Road Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the range of swells directed at Stent Road through a typical July, based on 3472 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Stent Road, and at Stent Road 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 without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 18% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Stent Road and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Stent Road, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Stent Road run for about 82% of the time.

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