Pollan Bay Surf Stats

This chart shows the variation of swells directed at Pollan Bay through an average August. It is based on 3590 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Pollan Bay, and at Pollan Bay the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 occurred only 5% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and biggest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Pollan Bay and away from the coast. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Pollan Bay, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical August, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Pollan Bay run for about 95% of the time.

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