Francis Beach Surf Stats

This image describes the variation of swells directed at Francis Beach through an average May. It is based on 2944 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Francis Beach. In the case of Francis Beach, the best grid node is 8 km away (5 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 15% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was W (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Francis Beach 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 Francis Beach, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical May, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Francis Beach run for about 85% of the time.

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