Wamberal Beach Surf Stats

The rose diagram describes the range of swells directed at Wamberal Beach through an average February. It is based on 3120 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 Wamberal Beach, and at Wamberal Beach the best grid node is 9 km away (6 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, 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 12% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Wamberal Beach 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 diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Wamberal Beach, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical February, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Wamberal Beach run for about 88% of the time.

read more