Otago Peninsula - Tomahawk Beach Surf Stats

The graph illustrates the combination of swells directed at Otago Peninsula - Tomahawk Beach through an average February. It is based on 3120 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Otago Peninsula - Tomahawk Beach. In this particular case the best grid node is 11 km away (7 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 occurred only 32% 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 occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was S, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Otago Peninsula - Tomahawk Beach and offshore. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Otago Peninsula - Tomahawk Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical February, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Otago Peninsula - Tomahawk Beach run for about 68% of the time.

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