Sea Island Surf Stats

This picture shows the combination of swells directed at Sea Island through an average April. It is 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 best grid node based on what we know about Sea Island. In this particular case the best grid node is 39 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 21% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was E, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Sea Island and offshore. 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 good for surfing at Sea Island, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Sea Island run for about 79% of the time.

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