Tago River Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Tago River through a typical September. It is based on 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 Tago River, and at Tago River the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 happened only 19% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Tago River and offshore. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Tago River, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Tago River run for about 81% of the time.

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