13th Beach-The Beacon Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the range of swells directed at 13th Beach-The Beacon through a typical April and is based upon 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 13th Beach-The Beacon, and at 13th Beach-The Beacon the best grid node is 23 km away (14 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing 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 only 6% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from 13th Beach-The Beacon and away from the coast. We combine these 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 clean enough to surf at 13th Beach-The Beacon, 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 April, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at 13th Beach-The Beacon run for about 94% of the time.

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