Tuncurry-North Wall Surf Stats

The graph describes the combination of swells directed at Tuncurry-North Wall through an average September, based on 3360 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Tuncurry-North Wall, and at Tuncurry-North Wall the best grid node is 36 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 only 75% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Tuncurry-North Wall and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Tuncurry-North Wall, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Tuncurry-North Wall run for about 25% of the time.

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