Brighton Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the combination of swells directed at Brighton Beach through an average October. It is based on 3471 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Brighton Beach. In the case of Brighton Beach, the best grid node is 15 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 56% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Brighton Beach and out to sea. 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 clean enough to surf at Brighton Beach, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical October, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Brighton Beach run for about 44% of the time.

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