Pacific Beach Pier Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Pacific Beach Pier through an average July. It is based on 3224 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (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 Pacific Beach Pier. In the case of Pacific Beach Pier, the best grid node is 32 km away (20 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred only 14% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and largest 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 happens. The diagram indicates 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 offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Pacific Beach Pier and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Pacific Beach Pier, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Pacific Beach Pier run for about 86% of the time.

read more