Fort de St Germain Des Vaux Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the range of swells directed at Fort de St Germain Des Vaux through an average June, based on 3024 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (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 Fort de St Germain Des Vaux. In this particular case the best grid node is 25 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred 62% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fort de St Germain Des Vaux and offshore. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Fort de St Germain Des Vaux, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Fort de St Germain Des Vaux run for about 38% of the time.

read more