Surf Forecast Surf Report
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Cardiff Reef Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at Cardiff Reef over a normal March, based on 3460 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 Cardiff Reef. In the case of Cardiff Reef, the best grid node is 19 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 64% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W (which was the same as the prevailing wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Cardiff Reef and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Cardiff Reef, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical March, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Cardiff Reef run for about 36% of the time.

Also see Cardiff Reef wind stats

Compare Cardiff Reef with another surf break

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