La Cote Sauvage Surf Stats

This image shows the variation of swells directed at La Cote Sauvage over a normal April. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about La Cote Sauvage, and at La Cote Sauvage the best grid node is 33 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 12% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was W, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the N. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from La Cote Sauvage and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at La Cote Sauvage, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at La Cote Sauvage run for about 88% of the time.

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