Statistiques de Surf de St Lucia

The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at St Lucia over a normal August, based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about St Lucia, and at St Lucia the best grid node is 16 km away (10 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 36% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from St Lucia 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 clean enough to surf at St Lucia, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical August, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at St Lucia run for about 64% of the time.

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