Papamoa Beach Park Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the range of swells directed at Papamoa Beach Park through an average September. It is based on 2880 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 best grid node based on what we know about Papamoa Beach Park. In the case of Papamoa Beach Park, the best grid node is 29 km away (18 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened 55% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the 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 WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Papamoa Beach Park and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Papamoa Beach Park, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical September, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Papamoa Beach Park run for about 19% of the time.

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