Newgale • Statistics for July

July: The Summer Flat Machine

July is the slowest month of the year for surf quality. Average swell height is only 2-3ft (0.8m) with an average period of 6.6s, which places most waves in the short-period, messy category. The swell window is, if anything, too westerly: WSW alone makes up 39.7 percent of all swell observations, but almost all of it is under 1m. There is no real groundswell to speak of, and the few 1-1.5m pulses are overwhelmed by wind. Onshore wind reaches 44 percent of the time from the SSW-SW-WSW-W quadrant, while ideal offshore wind drops to just 5 percent. A summer high pressure over the Azores often deflects storms away from Pembrokeshire, and the result can be days of flat, bumpy ocean. When an easterly breeze and a small westerly pulse do line up, the beach offers clean longboard waves, but do not expect much more. Water temperature is 16.2°C, air temperature averages 15.2°C, and precipitation is moderate at 2.56 mm/day, making it the warmest season for sitting in the lineup even when the surf is small.