Rangiora Street Surf Stats

The rose diagram illustrates the variation of swells directed at Rangiora Street 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 coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Rangiora Street. In this particular case the best grid node is 42 km away (26 miles). The rose diagram illustrates the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but without 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 happened only 13% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the largest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In both graphs, the area of any colour is proportional to how commonly that size swell happens. The diagram implies that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was W (which was the same as the most common wind direction). Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Rangiora Street and out to sea. 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 Rangiora Street, you can select a similar diagram that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average November, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Rangiora Street run for about 56% of the time.

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