36th Street Surf Stats

The figure describes the variation of swells directed at 36th Street through a typical October, based on 4711 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about 36th Street. In this particular case the best grid node is 34 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 occurred only 69% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the dominant 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 36th Street and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at 36th Street, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at 36th Street run for about 14% of the time.

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