Kaiaua Bay Surf Stats

The graph shows the combination of swells directed at Kaiaua Bay over a normal August, based on 3582 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Kaiaua Bay. In the case of Kaiaua Bay, the best grid node is 26 km away (16 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 happened only 52% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest 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 dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was E, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Kaiaua Bay 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 surfable at Kaiaua Bay, 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 August, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Kaiaua Bay run for about 48% of the time.

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