Bruny Island - Mabel Bay Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at Bruny Island - Mabel Bay through an average January and is based upon 3364 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Bruny Island - Mabel Bay, and at Bruny Island - Mabel Bay the best grid node is 13 km away (8 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 12% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, 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 SSW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Bruny Island - Mabel Bay and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Bruny Island - Mabel Bay, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical January, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Bruny Island - Mabel Bay run for about 88% of the time.

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