Neah Bay Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the range of swells directed at Neah Bay through a typical July. It is based on 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Neah Bay. In this particular case the best grid node is 32 km away (20 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 34% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest 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 longest spokes, was W (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Neah Bay and away from the coast. 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Neah Bay, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Neah Bay run for about 8% of the time.

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