Ponte Vedra Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the variation of swells directed at Ponte Vedra over a normal June, based on 3506 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Ponte Vedra. In the case of Ponte Vedra, the best grid node is 45 km away (28 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 13% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Ponte Vedra and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Ponte Vedra, 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 June, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Ponte Vedra run for about 87% of the time.

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