Poca Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Poca through a typical April, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Poca. In this particular case the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without 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 only 83% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Poca and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Poca, 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 April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Poca run for about 13% of the time.

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