Papenoo Beach (Chinaman's Bay) Surf Stats

This chart describes the combination of swells directed at Papenoo Beach (Chinaman's Bay) through an average October and is based upon 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Papenoo Beach (Chinaman's Bay), and at Papenoo Beach (Chinaman's Bay) the best grid node is 10 km away (6 miles). The rose diagram describes 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 100% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Papenoo Beach (Chinaman's Bay) and out to sea. 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 diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Papenoo Beach (Chinaman's Bay), you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical October, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Papenoo Beach (Chinaman's Bay) run for about 0% of the time.

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