Salt Creek (Gravels) Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the combination of swells directed at Salt Creek (Gravels) over a normal October. It is based on 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Salt Creek (Gravels). In this particular case the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 were forecast only 4% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Salt Creek (Gravels) 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Salt Creek (Gravels), you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical October, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Salt Creek (Gravels) run for about 96% of the time.

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