Nobby's Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at Nobby's Beach through an average May and is based upon 2838 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Nobby's Beach, and at Nobby's Beach the best grid node is 8 km away (5 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 11% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was ESE, 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 Nobby's Beach 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 diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Nobby's Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Nobby's Beach run for about 89% of the time.

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