Checked MagicSeaWeed. Their buoy forecasts calling for Friday/Sunday swells. How you think this will progress? http://magicseaweed.com/Manasquan-Surf-Report/386/detailedLongRange/us/ Those will be fun if they keep up. I know its long range forecasting and chances are it'll change A LOT but I hope it doesn't. Would be amazing if it doesn't. What are you guys feeling?
Magic seaweed is nearly worthless. They actually aren't forecasting swell even tho they claim to. There was a whole thread on this topic earlier. their forecast of 3' swell @ 16 seconds Friday is bogus.
Their forecasts are wave buoys. Nothing near shore. All that is ocean swell. Watch the periods with any bump in the water. If its coming ESE like it says and holds up that period parts of NJ will be good. Best thing you can do with that site is take the data and make your own forecast from it
great example of why not to use magic seaweed! Ok, so you are seeing on Friday - 3ft @ 16 seconds. Now, go to Monmouth County, NJ Swellinfo surf forecast page, and look at the swell plots or click view details on the surf plots. Here is where you will see the whole spectrum of wave heights sorted out into individual swells. You should see 4 different swells. 0.7 ft @ 8sec - ESE (red) 1 ft @ 15 sec - ESE (blue) 1.3ft @ 4 sec - ENE (pink) 1.6ft @ 6 sec - S (orange) So, magicseaweed is giving a combined wave height of 3ft @ 16secons. But, they are not showing you whats really going on in the wave spectrum. There is an underlying 1ft ESE long period swell, and some very small short period swells mixing in. Make sense?
another good thing to keep in mind when looking at the buoy data. There is the combined wave height, and then there is a swell height. With the longer period swells, always look at the swell height and period to kind of distinguish the underlying long period swells from the local wind swells.
magicseaweed, wetsand, wavewatch, surfline, ect.......they all blow a big one....seriously! NOAA & SWELLINFO is where it's at. The ONLY issue i see with swellinfo is the inaccuracy with the water temps. It states that the water is 58 right now for Monmouth County and really it's 51-52. The temps have been off for awhile sometimes on point tho but off more than on. Is there any plans in the future to get real time statistics? temp/wind? Otherwise, this is my #1 surf site. And i couldn't be happier with with any other site Thanks!
Who wants to be the checker? Who's willing to wade into the surf zone every morning to take a temperature reading? Not I.
It wouldn't be every morning...It would be every hour.....The water temp changes every hour. BTW -- there is equipment that does it no need to run to the beach with a thermometer. like this is real time very useful for me
We are using a data set right now that uses buoy temps and satelite derived data. It does not handle the coastal upwelling type of scenarios. I'm looking into switching to a way to use coastal buoys where possible, but still this is only good for some locations. Until NOAA gets better with their satelite derived coastal data, the only perfect system would be to have someone take the temp reading every day. In general using the buoys close to your location is good, and just keep in mind colder water is going to upwell on the southerly swells.
Noaa's "swell" Keep in mind that NOAA's definition of swell is "longer period than the local windchop". Thus if you have 4s windchop on top of 8s windwaves, the windwaves will register as "swell". Check the period spectrum graph (link) near the bottom of the page and you will get a better sense for how many wave types are in the water and the energy each one is carrying. Although you get no directional info from most of the buoys, if you have been following the forecasts/models you can usually figure out which direction each one is coming from.
I just dont see how its only gonna be knee high on thursday? seas are forecasted to be 4-7ft on wednesday and the winds arent supposed to go offshore. where is the swell gonna go?
its just a quick shot of S/SW wind swell - not looking that impressive. The seas will be much greater off the coast (4-7), which is where the marine forecasts are for. The thursday forecast is currently at knee to thigh, occ. waist. late day wed. is prob the best bet right now. looks like winds could go west late in the day, but if they are SW there are places that are directly offshore with a SW.
yo dudes. can someone redirect me to the thread trashing magicseaweed? also, ive got a decent grasp of predicting waves, but was wondering if theres any resources - like books or anything - that would help me get my game up.
Just research the internet. The best way to predict a wave is to know your local break. If you know the break, you see when its good and when its bad. That will help you be able to predict it for your break, and eventually move on to other breaks.
true, but saturday was a pretty quick shot of south winds and it produced shoulder high sets all the way through late sunday. This swell doesnt seem to have an impressive fetch, but it seems more impressive than saturday's setup did.
