Lidos Left Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at Lidos Left over a normal May, based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Lidos Left. In this particular case the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 were forecast only 66% of the time. 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 occurs. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was N, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Lidos Left and away from the coast. We combine these 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 Lidos Left, 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 May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Lidos Left run for about 34% of the time.

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