Blacks Reef Surf Stats

The figure describes the combination of swells directed at Blacks Reef through a typical August. It is based on 3574 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Blacks Reef, and at Blacks Reef the best grid node is 54 km away (34 miles). The rose diagram describes 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 occurred only 45% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red represents the highest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was S, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the WNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Blacks Reef and away from the coast. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Blacks Reef, 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 August, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Blacks Reef run for about 55% of the time.

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