Pelican Poles Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Pelican Poles through a typical May, based on 2944 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Pelican Poles. In this particular case the best grid node is 22 km away (14 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 occurred 30% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Pelican Poles 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 clean enough to surf at Pelican Poles, you can select a similar diagram 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 surfable waves at Pelican Poles run for about 70% of the time.

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