This image shows only the swells directed at Coast Guard that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical August. It is based on 1736 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs.

The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was N, whereas the the most common wind blows from the E. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 0.9% of the time, equivalent to 0 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal August. Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds we estimate that clean surf can be found at Coast Guard about 0.9% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 1.1% of the time. This is means that we expect 1 days with waves in a typical August, of which 0 days should be surfable.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.