Mpande Bay Surf Stats

The figure illustrates the variation of swells directed at Mpande Bay through an average July. It is based on 2976 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 optimum grid node based on what we know about Mpande Bay, and at Mpande Bay the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, 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 only 73% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was E, whereas the the most common wind blows from the NW. Because the wave model grid is out to sea, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Mpande Bay and offshore. We group these 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 clean enough to surf at Mpande Bay, 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 July, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Mpande Bay run for about 27% of the time.

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