Pentrez Plage Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the range of swells directed at Pentrez Plage through a typical December, based on 3200 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Pentrez Plage. In the case of Pentrez Plage, the best grid node is 56 km away (35 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 only 5% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Pentrez Plage and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Pentrez Plage, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average December, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Pentrez Plage run for about 72% of the time.

read more