Surf Forecast Surf Report
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The Heads Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

The graph describes the combination of swells directed at The Heads through an average March. It is based on 3460 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about The Heads. In this particular case the best grid node is 48 km away (30 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These happened only 23% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was S (which was the same as the dominant wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from The Heads and out to sea. We group these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at The Heads, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical March, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at The Heads run for about 77% of the time.

Also see The Heads wind stats

Compare The Heads with another surf break

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