Riviere Noire Harbour Surf Stats

The graph describes the range of swells directed at Riviere Noire Harbour through a typical July. It is 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 best grid node based on what we know about Riviere Noire Harbour, and at Riviere Noire Harbour the best grid node is 40 km away (25 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 were forecast only 37% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Riviere Noire Harbour and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Riviere Noire Harbour, 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 July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Riviere Noire Harbour run for about 63% of the time.

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