Etang-Sale Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Etang-Sale through a typical June and is based upon 2786 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (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 Etang-Sale. In the case of Etang-Sale, the best grid node is 31 km away (19 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 18% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the ESE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Etang-Sale and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Etang-Sale, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Etang-Sale run for about 82% of the time.

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