Tidals Surf Stats

This chart describes the range of swells directed at Tidals through an average June, based on 3384 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Tidals. In this particular case the best grid node is 18 km away (11 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 11% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was S, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Tidals 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Tidals, 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 June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Tidals run for about 89% of the time.

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