L'Abbatoir Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at L'Abbatoir through a typical October. It is based on 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about L'Abbatoir. In this particular case the best grid node is 2 km away (1 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 53% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NNE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from L'Abbatoir and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at L'Abbatoir, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at L'Abbatoir run for about 47% of the time.

read more