This image shows only the swells directed at Bawa that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions over a normal northern hemisphere spring. It is based on 4842 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast.

The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WSW. The chart at the bottom shows the same thing but without direction information. For example, swells larger than 1.5 feet (0.5m) coincided with good wind conditions 71% of the time, equivalent to 65 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to occur in a normal northern hemisphere spring but 12% of the time we expect swell in the range 2-3m (6.5-10ft) 12%, equivalent to (11 days). Taking into account the proportion of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds, and given the fact that Bawa is exposed to open water swells, we calculate that clean surf can be found at Bawa about 71% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 29% of the time. This is means that we expect 91 days with waves in a typical northern hemisphere spring, of which 65 days should be surfable.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.