Farmer Burgers Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Farmer Burgers through a typical April. It is based on 2880 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Farmer Burgers, and at Farmer Burgers the best grid node is 35 km away (22 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 1.1% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, 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 biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Farmer Burgers and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Farmer Burgers, 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 April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Farmer Burgers run for about 99% of the time.

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