Burreh Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the variation of swells directed at Burreh Beach over a normal June, based on 3506 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Burreh Beach, and at Burreh Beach the best grid node is 29 km away (18 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened 39% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Burreh Beach and offshore. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Burreh Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical June, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Burreh Beach run for about 61% of the time.

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