North Bar Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at North Bar over a normal May, based on 2838 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about North Bar. In this particular case the best grid node is 13 km away (8 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 64% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from North Bar and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at North Bar, 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 May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at North Bar run for about 5% of the time.

read more