East Point Long Cay Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at East Point Long Cay over a normal June. It is based on 2786 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about East Point Long Cay, and at East Point Long Cay the best grid node is 13 km away (8 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing 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 only 9% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was E (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from East Point Long Cay and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at East Point Long Cay, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical June, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at East Point Long Cay run for about 11% of the time.

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