Gills Bay Surf Stats

The graph illustrates the range of swells directed at Gills Bay over a normal April, based on 3120 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the shore so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about Gills Bay, and at Gills Bay the best grid node is 45 km away (28 miles). The rose diagram shows the distribution of swell sizes and directions, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but lacks direction information. Five colours illustrate increasing wave sizes. Blue shows the smallest swells, less that 0.5m (1.5 feet) high. These happened only 8% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and largest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell was forecast. The diagram suggests that the dominant swell direction, shown by the largest spokes, was NW, whereas the the most common wind blows from the SSW. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Gills Bay and out to sea. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To avoid confusion we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Gills Bay, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. During a typical April, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Gills Bay run for about 73% of the time.

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