Breaker Bay Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at Breaker Bay over a normal July. It is based on 3720 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (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 Breaker Bay, and at Breaker Bay the best grid node is 33 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred only 36% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Breaker Bay and away from the coast. 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 surfable at Breaker Bay, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical July, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Breaker Bay run for about 42% of the time.

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