Shooting Gallery Surf Stats

This image describes the range of swells directed at Shooting Gallery through a typical July, based on 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 Shooting Gallery, and at Shooting Gallery the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 1.9% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was N, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Shooting Gallery and out to sea. 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 clean enough to surf at Shooting Gallery, 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 July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Shooting Gallery run for about 53% of the time.

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