Seven Mile Beach Surf Stats

The figure shows the variation of swells directed at Seven Mile Beach through a typical August, based on 3472 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coast so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Seven Mile Beach, and at Seven Mile Beach the best grid node is 30 km away (19 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing 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 27% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red represents biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell occurs. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SE, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Seven Mile Beach and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose diagram. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at Seven Mile Beach, 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 August, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at Seven Mile Beach run for about 73% of the time.

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