Fairhaven Surf Stats

This image describes the range of swells directed at Fairhaven through an average November. It is based on 2867 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Fairhaven, and at Fairhaven the best grid node is 35 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 occurred only 11% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Fairhaven 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Fairhaven, 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 November, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Fairhaven run for about 30% of the time.

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