Cave Rock Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the variation of swells directed at Cave Rock over a normal April. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Cave Rock, and at Cave Rock the best grid node is 7 km away (4 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 59% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was S, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Cave Rock and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Cave Rock, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Cave Rock run for about 41% of the time.

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