Ruapuke Wind Stats

The rose diagram shows how often and how strongly the wind blows from different directions through a typical May. The longest spokes point in the directions the wind most commonly blows from and the shade of blue implies the strength, with the strongest winds shown by the darkest shade of blue. It is based on 3422 NWW3 forecasts of wind since since 2007, at 3hr intervals, for the closest NWW3 model node to Ruapuke, located 27 km away (17 miles). There are not enough recording stations world wide to use actual wind data. Invevitably some coastal places have very localized wind effects that would not be predicted by NWW3. According to the model, the most common wind at Ruapuke blows from the WSW. If the rose diagram shows a close to circular outline, it means there is no strong bias in wind direction at Ruapuke. On the other hand, dominant spokes show favoured directions, and the more the darkest shade of blue, the stronger the wind. Spokes point in the direction the wind blows from. Over an average May, the model suggests that winds are light enough for the sea to be glassy (pale blue) about 9% of the time (3 days each May) and blows offshore 32% of the time (10 days in an average May). During a typical May winds stronger than >40kph (25mph) are expected on 4 days at Ruapuke

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