Statistiques de Surf de Panama City Beach

The figure illustrates the range of swells directed at Panama City Beach over a normal October and is based upon 2973 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 Panama City Beach. In this particular case the best grid node is 28 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 71% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Panama City Beach and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Panama City Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Panama City Beach run for about 29% of the time.

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