La Salie Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at La Salie through an average July and is based upon 3720 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 La Salie. In the case of La Salie, the best grid node is 20 km away (12 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 3% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest 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 most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from La Salie 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 surfable at La Salie, 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 good for surfing waves at La Salie run for about 97% of the time.

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