This image shows only the swells directed at El Segundo Beach Jetty that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical June. It is based on 1594 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens.

The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). 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 35% of the time, equivalent to 10 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to arise in a normal June. Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with forecast offshore winds we calculate that clean surf can be found at El Segundo Beach Jetty about 35% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 59% of the time. This is means that we expect 28 days with waves in a typical June, of which 10 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.