False water temps, Dont be fooled...

Yeah its not swell fault it the reading at what depth the bouy is reading. When in doubt wear the a thicker suit. It better to roast and be cold

 

SHHHHH!!! Don't give away the secrets! If you tell the noobs (read mooks) that it's warmer they will think to pack less gear, then when they get in they will realize it's colder than they read on the charts, resulting in less water time for them, more water time for us!

 

yea, that happens all the time. i thought it was because they take they temp further offshore where the water is warmer. and what the hell does "accusal" mean?

 

Why doesn't someone living in OC MD and OC NJ each volunteer to start doing real life temperature readings. There is already a guy in OC MD that does it every day (for someone else of course, wink wink) but you shoud just contact the dude and have him release his data every few days...


His live temperature reading for today said that OC MD was 46 degrees on the dot... That was water NOT taken from the inlet or anywhere with shallow bay water around it, so that should be the most accurate reading....

And this all goes back to previous posts that we have all made discussing forecasting data etc... If you are pulling data realtime off of third party sources, your data gets skewed sometimes. Thats just life. Which is why when I ran my little surf forecasting site, my daily reports and readings were generally pretty legit. They were always within a foot or two size wise, the temps were always pretty close because the water temps dont change much, but still, everyday after I would surf in the morning, I would come back home, hop on the site for about 5 mintues and make any report/water temp adjsutments that I saw were off. Sometimes the thing would be off a few feet or something, so I would ahve to manually change the data...

But that was all info based on one 80 mile stretch of beach...

I know swellinfo caters to forecastings all over the world etc.... but it seems to me that the most common users, and the ones who have the most impact on this site all live in the mid-atlantic, so I encourage all of you guys to use any resources on here to SHARE real data with each other... I know it goes against everything ingrained in a surfers head. Why on earth would you want to help some other guy get a good session or invade your turf, but honestly, this is a community and we should share good information with each other...

And in 2 months, this conversation really doesn't matter. Who cares if it 66 or 69 degrees... It is PRETTY important if we are talking about if its 46 or 52... Now that makes a world of difference.

but if you have been surfing in the past week or so, you should pretty much know the water temps... If you see that the temps increased 7 degrees in two days, you can figure out that its wrong.

 

No rocket science here. It is cold. South of Cape Point is warmer. FL is warm. The tropics are very warm. One could also develop an algorithm that would come close to predicting the water temp for OC/Md.

How far off is the Station LWSD1 - 8557380 - Lewes, DE buoy on water temps? It usually seems close for 9 months of the year.

 

Why doesn't everyone just suck it up and stop worrying about ways to figure out the temperature. If you knew how cold it was the last time you went out then use your brain to figure out how much it has warmed up about since last time. If it was only 44 degrees last time you went out, and that was only a week ago its impossible for it to be 50 degrees this time.

 

What I try to do is look at both Swellinfo, and the nodc website, and compare. Like for Cape May Swellinfo has 50, but nodc has 54. I am pretty skeptic of the 54, but with this mild weather we have been having this Spring which is the nicest in years I wouldn't be surprised if the water was a little bit more milder. For Cape May I would guess somewhere between 48, and 50. Haven't been there since last week, but it was definitely upper 40s, and almost time to lose the gloves. Sandy Hooks got 55.8, and I can't believe that.

 

yeah what eatswell said

i use nodc site and its saying sandy hook is 57 now, with this nice little heat wave were having i think the water did get warmer but not 57 more like 48-50

 

Yeah Rod, the Lewes station is fine except for Nov - Jan when the frigid NW winds blow icy surface water down the bay and cause that station to be about 5 degrees colder than the ocean.

With regard to the OC inlet station, i dont think you need a complicated algorithm, just look at what the station is reading during the incoming tide and your probably getting reasonable ocean temps, disregard it during the outgoing...

When it read 59.9 at 10 p.m. last night, ignore
When it read 51.6 at 6 a.m. this morning, use

 

I was in the water for like 30-40 min. yesterday no wetsuit. It was nice.

 

guys... you are right, the water temp for the Ocean City page is currently be read from the buoy station right inside the inlet there, and this can often be too warm depending on the currents.

I went ahead and switched Ocean City to read from Buoy 44009. This is 20 miles off the coast, but might have less discrepancies.

For those who want to get the most information, what I suggest, is to click on the buoy data map, and check out all of the nearshore buoys. There is:

LWSD1 - right inside the Del Bay in Lewes.
44009 - 20 miles off of Fenwick Island
OCIM2 - right inside the ocean city inlet.

By looking at all of the data, you will get the clearest picture. And, you will then see how the different currents will influence each station and the water temp at the beach where your surfing.

Obviously the best way to get ocean temp is to go to the beach and measure, but that is just not realistic for this site to get all of that data for every location.

I hope that helps!