Lecount Hollow Surf Stats

This picture describes the variation of swells directed at Lecount Hollow through a typical May and is based upon 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Lecount Hollow. In this particular case the best grid node is 9 km away (6 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 happened only 65% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ENE, 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 Lecount Hollow 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Lecount Hollow, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Lecount Hollow run for about 35% of the time.

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