Medewi Surf Stats

This picture describes the combination of swells directed at Medewi over a normal May and is based upon 3414 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Medewi. In the case of Medewi, the best grid node is 36 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 only 0.6% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, 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 longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Medewi and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Medewi, 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 surfable waves at Medewi run for about 99% of the time.

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