Motuau Island Surf Stats

This image describes the range of swells directed at Motuau Island through a typical November. It is based on 2867 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 most applicable grid node based on what we know about Motuau Island. In the case of Motuau Island, the best grid node is 4 km away (2 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks 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 94% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and red illustrates highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NNW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the E. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Motuau Island and out to sea. We group these 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 Motuau Island, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were predicted to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average November, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Motuau Island run for about 6% of the time.

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