Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island through a typical September. It is based on 2880 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 best grid node based on what we know about Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island. In the case of Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island, the best grid node is 5 km away (3 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 illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred only 61% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island 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 plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average September, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island run for about 39% of the time.

read more