Atlantic Terrace Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Atlantic Terrace through a typical December. It is based on 3448 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Atlantic Terrace, and at Atlantic Terrace the best grid node is 2 km away (1 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 only 45% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Atlantic Terrace and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Atlantic Terrace, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average December, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Atlantic Terrace run for about 55% of the time.

read more