when i checked the swell report for seaside heights yesterday it said that it would be 2-3 feet by noon. i got there around noon and it was no wherree near that. more like 6 feet at the smallest point, and pushin 10 at others. what should i think?? what other sites could i look into before i head out?? EDIT: I just checked a web cam for the casino pier. it is deffinitly not flatt.
There is a difference between swell height and wave height. The way I understand it, swell height is the height of the swell out in deeper water before it steepens up and breaks in the surf zone. So a 2-3 foot high "swell" can easily be enough swell to produce 6 foot wave faces. Its lot more complicated than that with swell period and bottom contours coming in to play but the bottom line is that a 2-3 foot swell forecast with 6 foot waves may or may not be an inaccurate forecast.
i don't believe any site had the correct forecast track because the storm came up a different way then everyone expected. Look at philly, they were supposed to get 8-10 inches of snow throughout both clippings of snow and instead they got around 17 in total. its hard to forecast things on the east coast because the swell it receives is coming across a land mass, unlike the west coast where it is coming across the massive pacific ocean developing and sending predictable swell in all directions. to forecast things on the east coast you have to know when the low pressure systems that move off the coast redevelop and where they do it, and at this time there are only computer models that can guess that, so whatever the forecast calls for is based off those models. and i'm curious, are you complaining that it was six feet at the smallest?
The size ended up bigger than most forecasts. It also didn't fade out like forecasts predicted. I only saw one site that came close on the accuracy of the size. It's not an exact science. I was happy, it was better than predicted
dude are you serious??? You really started a thread about how the waves were better than forecasted?? I think you should quit checking the surf in seaside and maybe just wait till summer where you can chill with all your homies at KARMA