Le Gouerou Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Le Gouerou over a normal April, based on 3120 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 Le Gouerou. In the case of Le Gouerou, the best grid node is 18 km away (11 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 9% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each 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 W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Le Gouerou and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Le Gouerou, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Le Gouerou run for about 91% of the time.

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