East End and The Gap Surf Stats

This image illustrates the variation of swells directed at East End and The Gap through an average July and is based upon 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about East End and The Gap. In this particular case the best grid node is 9 km away (6 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 were forecast only 9% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was W, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from East End and The Gap and away from the coast. 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 good for surfing at East End and The Gap, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at East End and The Gap run for about 74% of the time.

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