Tugun Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the range of swells directed at Tugun over a normal July. It is based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Tugun, and at Tugun the best grid node is 16 km away (10 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened 23% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was E, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Tugun and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Tugun, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Tugun run for about 77% of the time.

read more