This image shows only the swells directed at Ventura Point that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions over a normal northern hemisphere winter. It is based on 5048 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, 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 longest spokes, was W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 13% of the time, equivalent to 12 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal northern hemisphere winter but 5% of the time we expect swell in the range 2-3m (6.5-10ft) 5%, equivalent to (5 days). Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with forecast offshore winds, and given the fact that Ventura Point is slightly protected from open water swells, we estimate that clean surf can be found at Ventura Point about 13% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 25% of the time. This is means that we expect 35 days with waves in a typical northern hemisphere winter, of which 12 days should be surfable.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.