Bird Rock Wind Stats

The rose diagram describes how frequently and how strongly the wind blows from different directions through a typical May. The largest spokes point in the directions the wind most commonly blows from and the shade of blue suggests the strength, with deep blue showing the strongest winds. It is based on 3440 NWW3 forecasts of wind since since 2007, at 3hr intervals, for the closest NWW3 model node to Bird Rock, located 24 km away (15 miles). There are too few recording stations world wide to use actual wind data. Without question some coastal places have very localized wind effects that would not be predicted by NWW3. According to the model, the most common wind at Bird Rock blows from the SW. If the rose graph shows a fairly circular pattern, it means there is no strong bias in wind direction at Bird Rock. By contrast, dominant spokes show favoured directions, and the more the darkest shade of blue, the stronger the wind. Spokes point in the direction the wind blows from. Over an average May, the model suggests that winds are light enough for the sea to be glassy (the lightest shade of blue) about 10% of the time (3 days each May) and blows offshore 58% of the time (6 days in an average May). During a typical May winds stronger than >40kph (25mph) are expected on 3 days at Bird Rock

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