This image shows only the swells directed at 13th Beach-The Beacon that coincided with light winds or offshore conditions through a typical June and is based upon 1608 predictions, one every 3 hours. The direction of the spokes show where quality surf generating swell comes from. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell occurs.

The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the WNW. 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 11 days. Open sea swells exceeding >3m (>10ft) are unlikely to happen in a normal June but 8% of the time you can expect swell in the range 1.3-2m (4-6.5ft) 8%, equivalent to (2 days). Taking into account the fraction of these swells that coincided with expected offshore winds, and given the fact that 13th Beach-The Beacon is exposed to open water swells, we calculate that clean surf can be found at 13th Beach-The Beacon about 37% of the time and that surf is spoilt by onshore wind 52% of the time. This is means that we expect 27 days with waves in a typical June, of which 11 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.