Salcombe Surf Stats
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- Weather State
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All swells
The figure describes the variation of swells directed at Salcombe over a normal March, based on 3460 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Salcombe. In this particular case the best grid node is 28 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing 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 90% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Salcombe and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Salcombe, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical March, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Salcombe run for about 5% of the time.