East Wittering Surf Stats

The graph shows the combination of swells directed at East Wittering through a typical May, based on 2590 NWW3 model predictions since 2008 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about East Wittering. In the case of East Wittering, the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 57% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from East Wittering and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at East Wittering, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at East Wittering run for about 3% of the time.

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