This image shows only the swells directed at Haqal that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical March and is based upon 1724 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 illustrate increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs.

The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was S (which was the same as the most common 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 44% of the time, equivalent to 14 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal March. Taking into account the ratio of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds, and given the fact that Haqal is exposed to open water swells, we calculate that clean surf can be found at Haqal about 44% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 32% of the time. This is means that we expect 24 days with waves in a typical March, of which 14 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.