Statistiques de Surf de Friars Bay

The figure shows the combination of swells directed at Friars Bay through a typical July. It is based on 3224 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (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 Friars Bay. In the case of Friars Bay, the best grid node is 13 km away (8 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 100% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was N, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Friars Bay and out to sea. We lump these in 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 surfable at Friars Bay, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Friars Bay run for about 0% of the time.

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