Plantations Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the combination of swells directed at Plantations through a typical June. It is based on 3266 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Plantations, and at Plantations the best grid node is 52 km away (32 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These were forecast only 5% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Plantations and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Plantations, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average June, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Plantations run for about 95% of the time.

read more