Apache Pier Swell Statistics, Febbraio: Surf with Light or Offshore Winds
This image shows only the swells directed at Apache Pier that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical February. It is based on 2102 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens.
The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 23% of the time, equivalent to 6 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to arise in a normal February. Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds, and given the fact that Apache Pier is exposed to open water swells, we calculate that clean surf can be found at Apache Pier about 23% of the time and that surf is blown out by onshore wind 30% of the time. This is means that we expect 15 days with waves in a typical February, of which 6 days should be surfable.
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.