Rapid Bay Surf Stats

This image describes the combination of swells directed at Rapid Bay through a typical July. It is based on 3720 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Rapid Bay. In this particular case the best grid node is 15 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 79% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Rapid Bay and offshore. We combine 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 clean enough to surf at Rapid Bay, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Rapid Bay run for about 4% of the time.

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