Statistiques de Surf de Ocean City

This chart describes the combination of swells directed at Ocean City over a normal September and is based upon 2880 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Ocean City. In the case of Ocean City, the best grid node is 12 km away (7 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 11% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Ocean City 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 Ocean City, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical September, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Ocean City run for about 89% of the time.

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