Otago Peninsula - Long Beach Surf Stats

This picture shows the range of swells directed at Otago Peninsula - Long Beach 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 coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Otago Peninsula - Long Beach. In this particular case the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 80% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red represents the biggest 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 biggest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Otago Peninsula - Long Beach and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Otago Peninsula - Long Beach, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Otago Peninsula - Long Beach run for about 13% of the time.

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