Prevalent and Dominant Winds on Hartlepool North Beach

In his book The Pebbles on the Beach, Clarence Ellis makes a distinction between prevalent and dominant winds with reference to their effects on waves. In our latitudes, the prevailing winds come from the south west due to a combination of global-scale convection cells in the air and the Coriolis Effect of the turning planet. On the Atlantic Coast, these winds have miles of ocean to blow over before reaching us, creating huge waves that also travel in from the south west. Here on the east coast, the prevailing wind is coming off the land and cannot therefore be responsible for the waves that break on the shore. When I took the picture on the east coast, the wind was coming from behind me and the waves were coming towards me. For this reason, Ellis would say that the dominant wind would be north east because it is the only one that can cause waves to break on our east coast.