I see that two of the 3 sites I check for surf say that this sunday is to be ankle high, basically flat. another site says that we will get 2 to 3 foot swell. I wonder if this will translate into waves on sunday, on Long Island. I suppose a lot could change from now till then, especially with a small snow even passing over the area saturday....
doesn't look good man. If you look at the wave maps, you will see what is going on with the forecasted systems. A strong N/NW flow sets in as a cold front pushes off the coast Saturday night into Sunday.
Hey guys, well Im just hoping to be pleasantly surprised like last weekend! here is what I was looking at, I hope a different surf site posting is ok here? looking at sunday, basically robert mosses all the way to rockaway beach http://www.surfline.com/surf-spots-breaks/northeast/long-island-new-york_2146
yeah, sorry to be bursting your bubble. The 2-3 ft seems based on there being a 3ft @ 4s WNW swell. I don't know LI, but I would be very suspicious of seeing any of that swell actually breaking on a beach. Hope things change for you (and the rest of us) though.
Good call Brek...isnt Robert Moses basically SSE facing? That 1 p.m. sunday forecast is crazy...How can you get 4 foot surf on a SSE facing beach out of 4'@ 4 sec WNW swell? Thats why i like Swellinfo data plots so much...Micah filters out the wind swells at each location that basically amount to out-to-sea wind chop.
What Mitchell was saying... If you are looking at state of the ocean at a given point in the open ocean, then you have to keep in min the swell direction, frequency, and magnitude of each individual swell. If you have a 4ft wind swell, going away from the ocean, then you get nothing...
SwellInfo, I see. I did think it would be little wierd for the system pushing away from the shoreline to sendback waves... But there will be energy passing over the area, and Im itching for some surf.. so maybe there will be some sort of refracting element based on the ocean surface off of long island! lol. we can hope right???? but looking at it the wind will be pretty strong too so even if we have waves it might be a mess...
If you make it a habit to look at the wave maps, you will start to understand more and more how the storm path influences waves at your beach. That is the first thing I check, the wave maps...
4 sec from the N or NNE does not make ridable surf in NoMoCo. I'm saying that because a bump on the graph does not mean waves if you know what makes your local tick... which is the point I think Swellinfo is trying to make. Checking the maps is your next step in putting the pieces together.
Ok, off the Long Island topic kinda but the stretch of coastline from vb through rodanthe, unlike any other on the east coast from western cape cod to sc, faces wnw. Ive seen this particular stretch of coast pick up nnw swell before and ive even seen a strong enough nnw wind swell wrap down into buxton (faces ese) with side/off shore conditions there. The Sunday forecast is calling nw winds which look to be pretty strong but im betting this swell misses the coastline. Prove me wrong please cuz we need some surf. I bet PR would prob be epic bout middle next week tho.
The current chart for my spot is calling for .6@4 South (8 pm). The buoy at 8 pm is reporting 4.3@5 south. The low is currently forming off the Carolina coast and will begin heading out to sea Saturday afternoon. The wind blew hard south all afternoon and is forecast to be 30 kts N before switching to NW later tomorrow (NOAA). So with the buoys currently showing triple the size of what was forecasted (I know 4.3@5 is still pretty worthless) and with this low pressure yet to do its thing; I would have to say it’s worth keeping an eye on things Saturday.
8:00 am Update:buoy 44065 is 2.3@9 ESE (almost waist high here) or as Swell Info likes to call it, .5@4 S (flat).
If you look at this and other "do it yourself" forecasting tools there is discrepancy in the size for tomorrows wind swell event. Some models are calling for waist high and others 1-2' overhead. I'm not a meteorologist so I just look at the nearshore models and NWS forecast and average it out as best you can. I've seen Rodanthe and that area pick up a NW windswell if there is any N in it at all offshore. But tomorrow's forecast is tough to decipher.
Maaaaybe knee high and gutless... high tide... glassy... breaking pretty much on the beach where I checked it. 44025 says about a foot and a half at 9 sec from the ESE. Swellinfo was calling for it to be less than a foot. Seein' as unrideable is unrideable, I'd give that a passing grade on your 'test' for up here.
Maybe if the tide was out it would be worth considering as there is a bump passing through the water. But I certianly didnt expect waves today. I was only questioning the call for 2 to 3 foot swell on sunday, reported at another site, mixed with the flat call last weekend where it turned out to be good chest high surf on LI... which was a nice surprise on sunday.
