Galveston - Flagship Pier Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at Galveston - FlagshipPier through an average September and is based upon 3120 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Galveston - FlagshipPier, and at Galveston - FlagshipPier the best grid node is 33 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast 58% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE, 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 Galveston - FlagshipPier 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 clean enough to surf at Galveston - FlagshipPier, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Galveston - FlagshipPier run for about 42% of the time.

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