Bird Rock Surf Stats
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- Weather State
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All swells
The graph illustrates the variation of swells directed at Bird Rock through a typical May, based on 3440 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Bird Rock. In the case of Bird Rock, the best grid node is 24 km away (15 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 5% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the 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 prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Bird Rock and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Bird Rock, 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 May, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Bird Rock run for about 39% of the time.