Tallebudgera Surf Stats

The figure describes the variation of swells directed at Tallebudgera through a typical August. It is based on 3472 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Tallebudgera, and at Tallebudgera the best grid node is 11 km away (7 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 52% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, 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 longest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Tallebudgera and offshore. 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 surfable at Tallebudgera, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average August, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Tallebudgera run for about 12% of the time.

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