Conado-Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at Conado-Beach through a typical December. It is based on 3448 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 Conado-Beach. In the case of Conado-Beach, the best grid node is 113 km away (70 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 occurred only 17% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NNE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Conado-Beach and out to sea. We group 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 surfable at Conado-Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average December, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Conado-Beach run for about 53% of the time.

read more