Anael Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Anael through a typical July. It is based on 3720 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Anael, and at Anael the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 happened only 4% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either 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 largest spokes, was W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Anael 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Anael, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Anael run for about 96% of the time.

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