St Andrews State Park Surf Stats

This image illustrates the combination of swells directed at St Andrews State Park through a typical April. It is based on 3359 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about St Andrews State Park. In this particular case the best grid node is 28 km away (17 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast 54% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from St Andrews State Park and offshore. We group 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 good for surfing at St Andrews State Park, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at St Andrews State Park run for about 46% of the time.

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