Medlands Beach Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the combination of swells directed at Medlands Beach through a typical November, based on 3347 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Medlands Beach, and at Medlands Beach the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These were forecast only 40% of the time. Green and yellow represent increasing swell sizes and red shows largest 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 biggest spokes, was NE, whereas the the most common wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Medlands Beach and offshore. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Medlands Beach, 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 November, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Medlands Beach run for about 19% of the time.

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