Tuckerman's Surf Stats

This image shows the combination of swells directed at Tuckerman's through an average July, based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Tuckerman's, and at Tuckerman's the best grid node is 23 km away (14 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing 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 occurred only 43% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was S, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Tuckerman's 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 diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Tuckerman's, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Tuckerman's run for about 57% of the time.

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