Pringle Bay Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the combination of swells directed at Pringle Bay through a typical November. It is based on 3347 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Pringle Bay, and at Pringle Bay the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 occurred only 7% of the time. 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 often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Pringle Bay and out to sea. 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Pringle Bay, 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 November, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Pringle Bay run for about 66% of the time.

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