Constantine Bay Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at Constantine Bay over a normal April and is based upon 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Constantine Bay, and at Constantine Bay the best grid node is 34 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 were forecast only 13% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Constantine Bay and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Constantine Bay, 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 April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Constantine Bay run for about 87% of the time.

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