Ozaki Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at Ozaki through a typical April, based on 2880 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Ozaki. In the case of Ozaki, the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without 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 happened only 53% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Ozaki and out to sea. We group 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 Ozaki, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Ozaki run for about 47% of the time.

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