El Segundo Beach Jetty Surf Stats

The figure describes the variation of swells directed at El Segundo Beach Jetty through an average July, based on 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about El Segundo Beach Jetty, and at El Segundo Beach Jetty the best grid node is 46 km away (29 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 happened only 3% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from El Segundo Beach Jetty 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 El Segundo Beach Jetty, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at El Segundo Beach Jetty run for about 97% of the time.

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