The Reef Wind Stats

The rose diagram shows how often and how strongly the wind blows from different directions through a typical August. The largest spokes point in the directions the wind most commonly blows from and the shade of blue suggests the strength, with the strongest winds shown by the darkest shade of blue. It is based on 3472 NWW3 forecasts of wind since since 2006, at 3hr intervals, for the closest NWW3 model node to The Reef, located 10 km away (6 miles). There are too few recording stations world wide to use actual wind data. Invevitably some coastal places have very localized wind effects that would not be predicted by NWW3. According to the model, the most common wind at The Reef blows from the NW. If the rose plot shows a nearly round shape, it means there is no strong bias in wind direction at The Reef. By contrast, dominant spokes illustrate favoured directions, and the more dark blue, the stronger the wind. Spokes point in the direction the wind blows from. Over an average August, the model suggests that winds are light enough for the sea to be glassy (light blue) about 6% of the time (2 days each August) and blows offshore 8% of the time (2 days in an average August). In a typical August wind stronger than >40kph (25mph) was predicted for only a single days at The Reef

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