Stroove Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the range of swells directed at Stroove through a typical 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 coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Stroove, and at Stroove the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes 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 90% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NNW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Stroove 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Stroove, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Stroove run for about 3% of the time.

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