This image shows only the swells directed at Commaret Point that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions over a normal northern hemisphere summer. It is based on 5066 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 represent increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast.

The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ENE (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). 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 2% of the time, equivalent to 2 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to occur in a normal northern hemisphere summer. Taking into account the ratio of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds we calculate that clean surf can be found at Commaret Point about 2% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 98% of the time. This is means that we expect 91 days with waves in a typical northern hemisphere summer, of which 2 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.