Point St George Surf Stats

This chart shows the variation of swells directed at Point St George through an average September and is based upon 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Point St George. In this particular case the best grid node is 31 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 19% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Point St George 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Point St George, 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 Point St George run for about 81% of the time.

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