Hayle Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at Hayle over a normal May, based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Hayle, and at Hayle the best grid node is 35 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 14% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows biggest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was W, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Hayle and offshore. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Hayle, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Hayle run for about 19% of the time.

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