Port Macquarie-North Breakwall Surf Stats

This chart illustrates the variation of swells directed at Port Macquarie-North Breakwall through a typical October. It is based on 3471 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Port Macquarie-North Breakwall. In this particular case the best grid node is 12 km away (7 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 59% 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 happens. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NE. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Port Macquarie-North Breakwall and offshore. 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 Port Macquarie-North Breakwall, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average October, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Port Macquarie-North Breakwall run for about 41% of the time.

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