North Stradbroke-Cylinders Surf Stats

This picture illustrates the variation of swells directed at North Stradbroke-Cylinders through a typical October and is based upon 2976 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about North Stradbroke-Cylinders. In the case of North Stradbroke-Cylinders, the best grid node is 11 km away (7 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 illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 37% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from North Stradbroke-Cylinders and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at North Stradbroke-Cylinders, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at North Stradbroke-Cylinders run for about 63% of the time.

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