This image illustrates how often and how strongly the wind blows from different directions through a typical northern hemisphere autumn. The biggest spokes point in the directions the wind most commonly blows from and the shade of blue suggests the strength, with the strongest winds shown by deep blue. It is based on 5144 NWW3 forecasts of wind since since 2006, at 3hr intervals, for the closest NWW3 model node to Long Beach, located 24 km away (15 miles). There are not enough recording stations world wide to use actual wind data. Without question some coastal places have very localized wind effects that would not be predicted by NWW3.

According to the model, the prevailing wind at Long Beach blows from the W. If the rose plot shows a nearly round shape, it means there is no strong bias in wind direction at Long Beach. By contrast, dominant spokes show favoured directions, and the more the darkest shade of blue, the stronger the wind. Spokes point in the direction the wind blows from. Over an average northern hemisphere autumn, the model suggests that winds are light enough for the sea to be glassy (the lightest shade of blue) about 19% of the time (17 days each northern hemisphere autumn) and blows offshore 33% of the time (31 days in an average northern hemisphere autumn). In a typical northern hemisphere autumn winds stronger than >40kph (25mph) are expected on 4 days at Long Beach

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.