This chart shows the range of swells directed at Indian Rocks Beach over a normal northern hemisphere winter, based on 5038 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 Indian Rocks Beach, and at Indian Rocks Beach the best grid node is 23 km away (14 miles).

The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred 69% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates the biggest swells, greater than >3m (>10ft). In each graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how frequently that size swell happens.

The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the longest spokes, was NW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the ENE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Indian Rocks Beach and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are clean enough to surf at Indian Rocks Beach, 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 northern hemisphere winter, swells large enough to cause surfable waves at Indian Rocks Beach run for about 31% of the time.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.