Perkos Surf Stats

This picture shows the variation of swells directed at Perkos over a normal April and is based upon 3120 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 Perkos. In this particular case the best grid node is 9 km away (6 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 80% of the time. Green and yellow represent 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 often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Perkos and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Perkos, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Perkos run for about 15% of the time.

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