Pouawa Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Pouawa Beach through an average July and is based upon 3720 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Pouawa Beach. In the case of Pouawa Beach, the best grid node is 33 km away (21 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was E, whereas the the most common wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Pouawa Beach and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Pouawa Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Pouawa Beach run for about 55% of the time.

read more