This image shows only the swells directed at Table Top that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions over a normal northern hemisphere spring and is based upon 4858 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 illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens.

The diagram suggests that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NNE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the E. 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 37% of the time, equivalent to 34 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to arise in a normal northern hemisphere spring but 4% of the time we expect swell in the range 2-3m (6.5-10ft) 4%, equivalent to (4 days). Taking into account the ratio of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds, and given the fact that Table Top is exposed to open water swells, we estimate that clean surf can be found at Table Top about 37% of the time and that surf is messed up by onshore wind 34% of the time. This is means that we expect 65 days with waves in a typical northern hemisphere spring, of which 34 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.