Statistiques de Surf de Port Waikato-The Reef

This chart describes the combination of swells directed at Port Waikato-The Reef through an average August, based on 3590 NWW3 model predictions since 2006 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the most applicable grid node based on what we know about Port Waikato-The Reef. In this particular case the best grid node is 22 km away (14 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, 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 5% of the time. Green and yellow show increasing swell sizes and highest swells greater than >3m (>10ft) are shown in red. 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 biggest spokes, was WSW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the W. Because the wave model grid is away from the coast, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Port Waikato-The Reef and out to sea. We lump these in with the no surf category of the bar chart. To keep it simple we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Port Waikato-The Reef, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were expected to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical August, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Port Waikato-The Reef run for about 95% of the time.

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