Kavieng Rights Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the range of swells directed at Kavieng Rights over a normal September. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (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 Kavieng Rights, and at Kavieng Rights the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram describes 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 happened only 23% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Kavieng Rights and out to sea. We combine these 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 Kavieng Rights, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Kavieng Rights run for about 77% of the time.

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