Moreton Island - Yellow Patch Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at Moreton Island - Yellow Patch over a normal September, based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Moreton Island - Yellow Patch. In the case of Moreton Island - Yellow Patch, the best grid node is 15 km away (9 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 41% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was NE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Moreton Island - Yellow Patch and away from the coast. We lump these in 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 Moreton Island - Yellow Patch, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical September, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Moreton Island - Yellow Patch run for about 4% of the time.

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