Narragansett Town Beach Surf Stats

The figure describes the variation of swells directed at Narragansett Town Beach over a normal May and is based upon 2838 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Narragansett Town Beach. In the case of Narragansett Town Beach, the best grid node is 38 km away (24 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 50% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either 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 biggest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Narragansett Town Beach and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Narragansett Town Beach, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Narragansett Town Beach run for about 50% of the time.

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