Box Head Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at Box Head through a typical July and is based upon 3720 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Box Head. In the case of Box Head, 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 lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 36% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Box Head and away from the coast. We lump these in 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 good for surfing at Box Head, 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 clean enough to surf waves at Box Head run for about 20% of the time.

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