We’ve gotten the itch to move on and try something new. What that might be is still up for grabs, but beginning May 1st, 2011 DukeStorm will be closing its doors. Only the “Reports” section will remain open ‘til May. So goodbye for now and we offer a huge thanks to all of our reporters, contributers, vistors and everyone who helped to beather life into the site.
That sites been dead since about a year after he started it. When Duke was working with JoeMac he would update with forcasts for every major swell event. Then he did the same for about a year after he started DukeStorm. Then the updates just got few and far between.
It's not an easy thing to maintain when it's not your full time job, so you can't really blame him.
Oh man this is bad news . Anybody who claims it is hard to predict swell in advance has never tried Dukes forcast. At his prime, he would call swell events well in advance. If he was off a bit he still would guess the wave trends correctly. I agree his updates just got too far and few but overall I wish he would stay. He had the most on point predictions (even better than swellinfo, sorry). Hopefully someone with equal knowledge will fill the void.
I agree - Duke storm will be - and, given the slow decline kind of, already has been - missed. One thing about reports - I use twitter a lot for work and have often thought it's the perfect tool for surf reports. I kind of wonder why it hasn't caught on - you could post a report and just use a hashtag like #njsurf and it would be great for real time info. Twitter kind of eliminates the need for a site to host reports.
Then again, whenever I think of something like this, I then think that sometimes I hate there being too much info available as it lessens the likelihood of that sweet unpredicted sneaker swell where you get it mostly to yourself. So I'm torn.
I'm not going to speak for Duke or Bryce, but we've all noticed that the website over the past couple of months has not been what it once was... and now we see why. It's time for change.
For those who used the site over the years, it was a great resource, and it's nice to hear some positive comments. I met a few good blokes through DukeStorm, and I wish them well in their next endeavor... whatever that may be.
Change is good. I don't blame them. How many times have we grabbed a different board... or jumped in the car and drove an hour... or a day... just to surf a different spot.... for a change of scenery... to see a few new rippers... see what they're riding... go back to the zen-like spontaneity of reading the wave instead of hitting the same sequence of turns you've had wired for years at your local.
Who knows... maybe something better will take it's place... but it will be missed.
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. Anybody who claims it is hard to predict swell in advance has never tried Dukes forcast. At his prime, he would call swell events well in advance. If he was off a bit he still would guess the wave trends correctly. I agree his updates just got too far and few but overall I wish he would stay. He had the most on point predictions (even better than swellinfo, sorry). Hopefully someone with equal knowledge will fill the void.
