Fort Pierce North Jetty Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the combination of swells directed at Fort Pierce North Jetty through a typical July, based on 3224 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Fort Pierce North Jetty. In the case of Fort Pierce North Jetty, the best grid node is 29 km away (18 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 were forecast 30% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fort Pierce North Jetty and offshore. We combine these 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 Fort Pierce North Jetty, you can load a different image 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 clean enough to surf waves at Fort Pierce North Jetty run for about 70% of the time.

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