Stale

Central

Name: Central buoy wave observations
Creator: Data was sourced from Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) - IMOS is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS).
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Australia

Last wave reading: Nov 13, 12:20 PM GMT+11

Last reading

This reading is more than 3 hours old. The buoy may have stopped sending waves for now.

Significant wave height at the buoy

0.4 ft

0.1 m

Dominant period: 2 s
Direction: from S 187°

This station does not send a swell and wind-wave split, so the numbers are for the whole sea.

Close to flat at the buoy: 0.4 ft of total wave height.

Significant wave height is the average of the biggest third of waves at the buoy. It is not surf height at a beach.

Trend at the buoy

Height at the buoy

Total (significant height)

Period

Dominant period

Hourly means of the buoy's readings. Arrows point the way the waves travel.

Model vs the buoy

Buoy, hourly
Model, past days
Model forecast

Model peak each day at the buoy
Day	Height	Peak period	From
Fri, Nov 13	1.1 ft	2.6 s	S
Sat, Nov 14	1.7 ft	3.3 s	S
Sun, Nov 15	2.8 ft	4.1 s	S
Mon, Nov 16	2.6 ft	3.8 s	S
Tue, Nov 17	1.2 ft	2.9 s	S
Wed, Nov 18	1.8 ft	3.1 s	S
Thu, Nov 19	1.1 ft	6.9 s	SSE
Fri, Nov 20	0.5 ft	13 s	S

ECMWF WAM wave model via Open-Meteo, nearest model cell (38.000°S, 144.750°E). Both lines are significant wave height at sea, the same measure the buoy reports. Model output, not a Quiver beach forecast.

Nearby buoys

Werribee0.7 ft · 20 sLive · 12 km
Indented Head0.4 ft · 20 sStale · 13 km
Sandringham0.3 ft · 2.1 sStale · 15 km
Mt Eliza0.4 ft · 17 sStale · 20 km
Rosebud0.3 ft · 20 sStale · 27 km
Weeroona Bay1.2 ft · 11 sLive · 31 km

How to read this buoy

Biggest hourly reading in that record: 2.0 ft at 3.7 s on Nov 12.

Operator: IMOS Coastal Wave Buoys Facility
Program: Australian national wave buoy network (AODN)
Position: 38.063°S, 144.867°E
Type: Moored buoy
Local time zone: Australia/Melbourne
Swell split: No, whole-sea numbers only

Source: Data was sourced from Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) - IMOS is enabled by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). Licence: CC BY 4.0. Changes: Quiver converts the units (feet, knots, °F) and shows a subset of the published fields. Station page at the source.

Not for navigation. Readings can be late, missing or wrong; check official marine forecasts before going to sea.

Buoy terms

Significant height: The average of the biggest third of waves the buoy measured. Sets in the surf zone can be bigger or smaller.
Dominant period: Seconds between the waves carrying the most energy. Longer period means more power and more bend around points.
Swell vs wind waves: Swell was made by distant wind; wind waves were made nearby. The buoy splits its spectrum at a cutoff period to report each.
Direction: Where waves come from, in degrees true. 270° is from the west.