This image shows only the swells directed at Majors Bay that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical August and is based upon 1736 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 often that size swell happens.

The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was S, whereas the the most common wind blows from the ENE. 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 43% of the time, equivalent to 13 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to arise in a normal August but 12% of the time you can expect swell in the range 1.3-2m (4-6.5ft) 12%, equivalent to (4 days). Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with forecast offshore winds, and given the fact that Majors Bay is exposed to open water swells, we estimate that clean surf can be found at Majors Bay about 43% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 1.0% of the time. This is means that we expect 14 days with waves in a typical August, of which 13 days should be clean enough to surf.

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.