Waitpinga Surf Stats
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All swells
![](/graphs/statistics/Waitpinga.surf.statistics.march.gif)
![](/graphs/statistics/SSW.animated.gif)
![](/graphs/statistics/SSW.label.animated.gif)
This chart describes the combination of swells directed at Waitpinga through an average March, based on 1228 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Waitpinga, and at Waitpinga the best grid node is 41 km away (25 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 happened only 0.7% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either 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 largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Waitpinga and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Waitpinga, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical March, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Waitpinga run for about 99% of the time.