Now friction kicks in, allowing the
wind to get a better grip on the
surface, systematically building up
the ripples to make wind chop.
Once waves grow beyond
capillary size, surface tension can’t
stop them.
Game on! Wind chop eventually
grows into the swell that marches
onto our shores as perfectly formed
surf.
The holy trilogy of wind is its
speed, duration and fetch. The
harder and longer it blows, and the
bigger the area it blows over in thesame direction combine to create
the deep ocean groundswells that
make us dodge school, skip work
and be delinquent in general.
Wind is what defines a wave’s
personality. Onshore and it presses
down the back of the wave, making
it crumbly. Offshore and it grooms
the wave whilst blowing up the
face.
Burgers? That’s a wind swell.
They’re generated by local winds
within a few hundred k’s of the
coast, and are characterised by
short periods and steep, choppywaves whose energy doesn’t extend
very deep.
Juice? That would be
groundswell. Generated by strong
winds much further away, creating
longer swell periods whose energy
can extend down to around
1000-feet deep. What makes them
golden to surfers is that they are
no longer affected by the wind that
generated them. Which, if local
conditions are calm, means large,
long-period waves with zero winds
to affect surface conditions.
Wind isn’t only about near andfar. Land and sea breezes throw
their own little dynamic into the
mix. Ask any east coast surfer
about how a pristine dawnie can
disintegrate into onshore slop in an
instant. Snooze you lose.
Like it or not, wind is the
primary thread woven into the
fabric of our lives as surfers. It’s the
most clicked icon on our desktop,
and app on our phone. It means
everything to us.
It can deliver, and it can
disappoint. But remember, it’s
always offshore somewhere...A true offshore breeze sculpts far
travelling ocean swells into perfect
waves for us to paint our favourite
pictures on. High Art!
PHOTO: BOSKO- Wind speed is measured by the
Beaufort scale, an empirical
measure that relates wind
speed to observed conditions
at sea or on land. The Beaufort
scale is recorded in knots –
the marine measurement for
wind. One knot equals nearly
2 (1.87km/h) kilometres per
hour. When you start seeing
a few whitecaps it’s around
27.8km/h and when you see
plenty of them it’s stronger
than 37km/h. Ocean spray?
That’d be higher than 46km/h. - We only really feel wind once
the speed exceeds 5.4km/h. - The windiest place in
Australia? ... Sandy Point in
Gippsland, Victoria, with an
average daily wind speed
of 32.6km/h. Interestingly,
Newcastle is fourth with
32km/h. - The calmest city in Australia
for wind? Katherine, NT, with
9.8km/h. - The windiest place on Earth?
Cape Denison in Antarctica,
with an average daily wind
speed of 72.3km/h.
Breezy Points
Wind is our friend or our foe. A sudden rain squall moves of the ocean
and crosses land turning what had been perfect Snapper Rock Peelers
just minutes ago, into onshore soup. PHOTO: SHIELD