Fort Le Marchant Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Fort Le Marchant over a normal November. It is based on 2889 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Fort Le Marchant. In the case of Fort Le Marchant, the best grid node is 1 km away (1 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 happened only 85% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NNE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fort Le Marchant 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 diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Fort Le Marchant, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical November, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Fort Le Marchant run for about 15% of the time.

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