Telescopes Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the variation of swells directed at Telescopes through an average August, based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Telescopes, and at Telescopes the best grid node is 8 km away (5 miles). The rose diagram shows 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 occurred only 0% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Telescopes and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Telescopes, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical August, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Telescopes run for about 100% of the time.

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