Now / North coast
Zhongjiao Bay 中角沙珠灣
Faces northeast. Takes swell from north-northwest round to east-southeast, best from north to east. Nearby buoys: Fugui Cape, Chaojing.
A sandy bay on the north coast, open to the northeast. The coast runs north-northwest on one side and out to a headland to the east-southeast on the other, so the northeast monsoon swell comes straight in.
Forecast
Measured
- Swell
- –
- 2nd swell
- –
- Wind
- –
- Tide
- –
- Water
- –
- Swell
- 2nd swell
- Wind, barbs = 10 kt
Next six days
Hover or tap to scrub; the readout, compass and map follow. Arrow keys step by the hour.
Forecast or measured?
Forecast numbers come from Météo-France's MFWAM wave model, via Open-Meteo, at a point a few km offshore of the beach. The model splits the sea into separate swell trains, each with its own height, period and direction, which is where the swell rows and arrows come from. It describes open water, so it doesn't know about reefs, sandbars or headlands, and it often reads high.
Measured numbers come from a CWA buoy, every hour. A buoy reports one total height, a mean period and one direction. It can't split the sea into swells, and it may be 20 km or more away, or tucked inshore. When the two disagree, the buoy is the truth about the water near it; the model is the better guide to what's coming.
Loading sources…
Every source, side by side
The buoy, CWA's own forecast and three global wave models on the same axes, so you can see where they agree. Model grid cells: loading…
Wave height
Significant wave height, total sea. Buoy observed (CWA O-B0075), CWA's WW3-based forecast (M-B0078-001, 3-hourly) and three global models via Open-Meteo. The buoy is offshore, not at the beach.
Swell breakdown
The total sea split into primary swell, secondary swell and local wind waves. Only these two models publish partitions through Open-Meteo; CWA's open data and ECMWF's do not.
Wave period
Mean wave period for every source (CWA's buoy period appears to be mean, not peak). Long-period swell shows up in the swell breakdown before it moves this number much.
Wave direction
Direction waves come from. CWA's forecast gives 16-point compass text, so it steps in 22.5° increments.
Wind at the spot
10 m wind from the ECMWF IFS and GFS weather models via Open-Meteo, CWA's own WRF at 3 km and 15 km (every 6 h, 3½ days out, a few km offshore), plus the reference buoy's anemometer.