St Andrews Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at St Andrews over a normal June, based on 3265 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about St Andrews. In this particular case the best grid node is 25 km away (16 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 happened 64% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from St Andrews and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at St Andrews, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical June, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at St Andrews run for about 6% of the time.

read more