Diria Surf Stats

The graph describes the range of swells directed at Diria through a typical May. It is based on 2838 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Diria. In the case of Diria, the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 99% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Diria and offshore. We lump these in 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 surfable at Diria, 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 May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Diria run for about 1.0% of the time.

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