Barview Jetty Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at Barview Jetty over a normal August. It is based on 3574 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Barview Jetty, and at Barview Jetty the best grid node is 70 km away (43 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 22% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Barview Jetty 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 diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Barview Jetty, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical August, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Barview Jetty run for about 78% of the time.

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