Keawaiki Bay Surf Stats

This image describes the range of swells directed at Keawaiki Bay over a normal April. It is based on 3360 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Keawaiki Bay. In this particular case the best grid node is 15 km away (9 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 73% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was W, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the N. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Keawaiki Bay 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Keawaiki Bay, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Keawaiki Bay run for about 5% of the time.

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