Castles Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Castles Beach through a typical January. It is based on 3364 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Castles Beach, and at Castles Beach the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 76% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Castles Beach and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Castles Beach, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average January, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Castles Beach run for about 24% of the time.

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