This image shows only the swells directed at Beacon Point that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions over a normal August. It is based on 1736 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 show increasing swell sizes and red represents largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs.

The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was E, whereas the the most common wind blows from the S. 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 32% of the time, equivalent to 10 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal August. Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds we estimate that clean surf can be found at Beacon Point about 32% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 35% of the time. This is means that we expect 21 days with waves in a typical August, of which 10 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.