Aberdeen Area Beach Surf Stats

This chart illustrates the combination of swells directed at Aberdeen Area Beach through a typical May. It is based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 Aberdeen Area Beach, and at Aberdeen Area Beach the best grid node is 23 km away (14 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 54% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Aberdeen Area Beach and offshore. 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 good for surfing at Aberdeen Area Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Aberdeen Area Beach run for about 46% of the time.

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