Honeymoon Island Surf Stats

The rose diagram shows the combination of swells directed at Honeymoon Island through a typical August, based on 3577 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast surf and wind right at the coast so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Honeymoon Island. In this particular case the best grid node is 20 km away (12 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened 82% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell was forecast. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was SW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the WSW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Honeymoon Island and away from the coast. We lump these in 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 Honeymoon Island, you can load a different image 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 good for surfing waves at Honeymoon Island run for about 18% of the time.

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