Whale Watch Reef Wind Stats

The figure illustrates how commonly and how strongly the wind blows from different directions through a typical May. The largest spokes point in the directions the wind most commonly blows from and the shade of blue suggests the strength, with the strongest winds shown by deep blue. It is based on 3440 NWW3 forecasts of wind since since 2007, at 3hr intervals, for the closest NWW3 model node to Whale Watch Reef, located 28 km away (17 miles). There are not enough recording stations world wide to use actual wind data. Invevitably some coastal places have very localized wind effects that would not be predicted by NWW3. According to the model, the dominant wind at Whale Watch Reef blows from the ENE. If the rose graph shows a fairly circular pattern, it means there is no strong bias in wind direction at Whale Watch Reef. Converseley, dominant spokes represent favoured directions, and the more deep blue, the stronger the wind. Spokes point in the direction the wind blows from. Over an average May, the model suggests that winds are light enough for the sea to be glassy (the lightest shade of blue) about 2% of the time (1 days each May) and blows offshore just 7% of the time (2 days in an average May). During a typical May wind stronger than >40kph (25mph) was predicted for only a single days at Whale Watch Reef

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