Salt Creek Middles Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at Salt Creek Middles through a typical July and is based upon 3472 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 Salt Creek Middles. In the case of Salt Creek Middles, the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 happened only 3% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Salt Creek Middles and offshore. We group these 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 Salt Creek Middles, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Salt Creek Middles run for about 97% of the time.

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