Banks Peninsula - Te Oka Bay Surf Stats

This picture describes the range of swells directed at Banks Peninsula - Te Oka Bay through a typical June and is based upon 3266 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 Banks Peninsula - Te Oka Bay. In this particular case the best grid node is 25 km away (16 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 represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These happened only 24% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest 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 longest spokes, was SSE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Banks Peninsula - Te Oka Bay and offshore. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Banks Peninsula - Te Oka Bay, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average June, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Banks Peninsula - Te Oka Bay run for about 59% of the time.

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