This image shows only the swells directed at Purema that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical June. It is based on 1608 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 represent 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 occurs.

The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. 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 46% of the time, equivalent to 14 days. Open water swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) only happen 3% of the time in a typical June, equivalent to just one day but 20% of the time we expect swell in the range 2-3m (6.5-10ft) 20%, equivalent to (6 days). Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds, and given the fact that Purema is exposed to open water swells, we estimate that clean surf can be found at Purema about 46% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 46% of the time. This is means that we expect 28 days with waves in a typical June, of which 14 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.