Scardog Reef Surf Stats

This picture shows the range of swells directed at Scardog Reef through an average April, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Scardog Reef. In the case of Scardog Reef, the best grid node is 23 km away (14 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 5% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Scardog Reef and out to sea. 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 good for surfing at Scardog Reef, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Scardog Reef run for about 95% of the time.

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