Bushrangers Bay Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Bushrangers Bay through a typical February. It is based on 3120 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Bushrangers Bay, and at Bushrangers Bay the best grid node is 36 km away (22 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 occurred only 14% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Bushrangers Bay and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Bushrangers Bay, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average February, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Bushrangers Bay run for about 86% of the time.

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