Walkerville Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at Walkerville through a typical April. It is based on 3360 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Walkerville. In the case of Walkerville, the best grid node is 18 km away (11 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours represent increasing wave sizes. Very small swells of less than 0.5m (1.5 feet) high are shown in blue. These were forecast only 96% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Walkerville and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Walkerville, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Walkerville run for about 3% of the time.

read more