Freshwater Bay Surf Stats

The figure describes the range of swells directed at Freshwater Bay through an average May. It is based on 2944 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Freshwater Bay. In the case of Freshwater Bay, the best grid node is 18 km away (11 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 happened 57% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate 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 commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Freshwater Bay and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Freshwater Bay, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Freshwater Bay run for about 43% of the time.

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