Freshwater Bay Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Freshwater Bay through a typical October, based on 3223 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Freshwater Bay, and at Freshwater Bay the best grid node is 18 km away (11 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred 46% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Freshwater Bay and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Freshwater Bay, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Freshwater Bay run for about 54% of the time.

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