Cigana Surf Stats

The figure describes the variation of swells directed at Cigana over a normal April, based on 3360 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Cigana. In this particular case the best grid node is 34 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred only 33% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Cigana and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Cigana, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Cigana run for about 67% of the time.

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