North Shore Breakers Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the combination of swells directed at North Shore Breakers over a normal June and is based upon 2786 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about North Shore Breakers. In the case of North Shore Breakers, the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 occurred only 74% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was N, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from North Shore Breakers and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at North Shore Breakers, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical June, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at North Shore Breakers run for about 26% of the time.

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