Galveston-61st Street Pier Surf Stats

The graph shows the variation of swells directed at Galveston-61st Street Pier through an average April and is based upon 3119 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Galveston-61st Street Pier. In this particular case the best grid node is 35 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These were forecast 29% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Galveston-61st Street Pier and out to sea. 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 clean enough to surf at Galveston-61st Street Pier, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical April, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Galveston-61st Street Pier run for about 71% of the time.

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