Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island Surf Stats

This chart describes the variation of swells directed at Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island through an average February, based on 2664 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island. In this particular case the best grid node is 5 km away (3 miles). The rose diagram illustrates 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 occurred only 61% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the highest 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island and out to sea. 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 Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical February, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Main Beach - North Stradbroke Island run for about 39% of the time.

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