Plage des Nations Surf Stats

This image shows the range of swells directed at Plage des Nations over a normal July, based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Plage des Nations. In this particular case the best grid node is 32 km away (20 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 0.4% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either 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 largest spokes, was NW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Plage des Nations and out to sea. 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Plage des Nations, 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 July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Plage des Nations run for about 100% of the time.

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