East Pier (Port Alfred) Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at East Pier (Port Alfred) over a normal April, based on 2880 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about East Pier (Port Alfred), and at East Pier (Port Alfred) the best grid node is 45 km away (28 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred only 12% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents largest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from East Pier (Port Alfred) and offshore. We group these 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 East Pier (Port Alfred), you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at East Pier (Port Alfred) run for about 88% of the time.

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