Vredenberg Point Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Vredenberg Point through a typical February. It is based on 3120 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Vredenberg Point. In this particular case the best grid node is 38 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 1.3% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Vredenberg Point and away from the coast. 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 surfable at Vredenberg Point, 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 February, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Vredenberg Point run for about 99% of the time.

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