Boucan Lefts Swell Statistics, Summer: All Swell – Any Wind
The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at Boucan Lefts over a normal southern hemisphere summer, based on 6365 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Boucan Lefts. In the case of Boucan Lefts, the best grid node is 24 km away (15 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 illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These were forecast only 16% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens.
The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Boucan Lefts and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Boucan Lefts, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical southern hemisphere summer, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Boucan Lefts run for about 84% of the time.
IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.