Asilomar Surf Stats

The figure shows the combination of swells directed at Asilomar over a normal January, based on 3364 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 Asilomar, and at Asilomar the best grid node is 15 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 were forecast only 1.3% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Asilomar and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Asilomar, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical January, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Asilomar run for about 99% of the time.

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