Stockton Surf Stats

This chart illustrates the combination of swells directed at Stockton through an average April, based on 3360 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 Stockton. In the case of Stockton, the best grid node is 35 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 occurred only 20% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Stockton and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Stockton, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Stockton run for about 80% of the time.

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