Main Beach Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the variation of swells directed at Main Beach through a typical October and is based upon 3471 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Main Beach. In the case of Main Beach, the best grid node is 23 km away (14 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 show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 0.1% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the S. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Main Beach and out to sea. We lump these in 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 clean enough to surf at Main Beach, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Main Beach run for about 90% of the time.

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