Cape May Avenue Surf Stats

This picture describes the combination of swells directed at Cape May Avenue over a normal June. It is based on 3506 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Cape May Avenue. In this particular case the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 11% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Cape May Avenue and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Cape May Avenue, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Cape May Avenue run for about 89% of the time.

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