Castaways Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at Castaways through an average May and is based upon 3406 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (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 Castaways, and at Castaways the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing 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 occurred only 24% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Castaways and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Castaways, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Castaways run for about 76% of the time.

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