Old Orchard Beach Surf Stats

This picture describes the range of swells directed at Old Orchard Beach through an average September, based on 2880 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Old Orchard Beach. In the case of Old Orchard Beach, the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 happened only 34% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Old Orchard Beach and offshore. 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 good for surfing at Old Orchard Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical September, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Old Orchard Beach run for about 66% of the time.

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