Nichinan Surf Stats

This image shows the range of swells directed at Nichinan through an average May. It is based on 2838 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Nichinan, and at Nichinan the best grid node is 13 km away (8 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 10% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Nichinan and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Nichinan, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Nichinan run for about 90% of the time.

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