Woolamai Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the combination of swells directed at Woolamai over a normal April, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Woolamai. In the case of Woolamai, the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 were forecast only 4% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Woolamai 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 good for surfing at Woolamai, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Woolamai run for about 96% of the time.

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