Wildwood Crest Surf Stats

This image illustrates the range of swells directed at Wildwood Crest over a normal September. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Wildwood Crest. In this particular case the best grid node is 28 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 happened only 11% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Wildwood Crest 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 good for surfing at Wildwood Crest, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical September, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Wildwood Crest run for about 89% of the time.

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