Midshore Bay Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Midshore Bay over a normal September and is based upon 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Midshore Bay. In the case of Midshore Bay, the best grid node is 44 km away (27 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 45% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Midshore Bay and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Midshore Bay, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Midshore Bay run for about 55% of the time.

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