Cabarita Surf Stats

This picture describes the variation of swells directed at Cabarita through an average August and is based upon 3574 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Cabarita, and at Cabarita the best grid node is 38 km away (24 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These occurred 29% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell was forecast. The diagram indicates that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was ESE, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Cabarita and out to sea. 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 good for surfing at Cabarita, 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 August, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Cabarita run for about 71% of the time.

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