17th Ave Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at 17th Ave through a typical October. It is based on 3470 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about 17th Ave. In the case of 17th Ave, the best grid node is 52 km away (32 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 occurred 55% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, 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 SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from 17th Ave and offshore. 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 diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at 17th Ave, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at 17th Ave run for about 45% of the time.

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