Banna Strand Surf Stats

This chart shows the combination of swells directed at Banna Strand over a normal May, based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Banna Strand, and at Banna Strand the best grid node is 20 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 occurred only 9% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Banna Strand and away from the coast. We combine 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 surfable at Banna Strand, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Banna Strand run for about 91% of the time.

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