Cannon Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at Cannon Beach through an average May and is based upon 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Cannon Beach, and at Cannon Beach the best grid node is 13 km away (8 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 28% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing 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 Cannon Beach and out to sea. We lump these in 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 Cannon Beach, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Cannon Beach run for about 72% of the time.

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