This image shows only the swells directed at Pauanui Beach that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical May. It is based on 1736 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell occurs.

The diagram indicates that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was ENE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. 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 16% of the time, equivalent to 5 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal May 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 proportion of these swells that coincided with predicted offshore winds, and given the fact that Pauanui Beach is slightly protected from open water swells, we think that that clean surf can be found at Pauanui Beach about 16% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 21% of the time. This is means that we expect 11 days with waves in a typical May, of which 5 days should be surfable.

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.