Statistiques de Surf de Fort Le Marchant

This picture shows the variation of swells directed at Fort Le Marchant over a normal August and is based upon 3224 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 best grid node based on what we know about Fort Le Marchant. In this particular case the best grid node is 1 km away (1 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 happened only 94% of the time. Green and yellow represent 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 happens. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fort Le Marchant 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 clean enough to surf at Fort Le Marchant, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical August, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Fort Le Marchant run for about 6% of the time.

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