Greens Point Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the variation of swells directed at Greens Point Beach over a normal June. It is based on 3266 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Greens Point Beach, and at Greens Point Beach the best grid node is 17 km away (11 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 1.3% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Greens Point Beach and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Greens Point Beach, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical June, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Greens Point Beach run for about 99% of the time.

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