Kawana Beach Surf Stats

This chart illustrates the variation of swells directed at Kawana Beach through a typical May and is based upon 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Kawana Beach. In this particular case the best grid node is 43 km away (27 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These occurred only 6% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Kawana Beach and out to sea. 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 good for surfing at Kawana Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average May, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Kawana Beach run for about 94% of the time.

read more