Surf Forecast Surf Report
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West Cape Surf Stats

All swells

(any wind direction)

Good Surf

(light / offshore wind)

The graph describes the combination of swells directed at West Cape through an average March, based on 3460 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind and surf right at the coastline so we have chosen the best grid node based on what we know about West Cape, and at West Cape the best grid node is 32 km away (20 miles). The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell sizes and swell direction, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing but 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 only 0.7% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and highest 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 occurs. The diagram suggests that the prevailing swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was SW, whereas the the dominant wind blows from the SSE. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from West Cape and away from the coast. 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 graph. Because wind determines whether or not waves are good for surfing at West Cape, you can load a different image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. In a typical March, swells large enough to cause clean enough to surf waves at West Cape run for about 99% of the time.

Also see West Cape wind stats

Compare West Cape with another surf break

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