Appreciate the effort Micah puts into Swell Info. One of my ways of helping out is by providing regular feedback on "forecast" vs. "observables" when I am on surf trips to Puerto Rico and Costa Rica - the forecasts have improved as adjustments have been made. My suggestion would be to email the details from your specific beach location, including the characteristics of the break (direction it faces, the GPS coordinates, wind and tide conditions, etc.) so the model can be fine tuned. Of course, it is not reasonable to expect the forecasting list to be specific to each and every peak along the coast!
I say take all the information as it is given, and deal with any inaccuracy in your own way. If the report says its head high on a certain swell direction and you know it's only waist high remember that spot for a day when its macking somewhere. If its bigger than the report claims on a certain day remember the conditions that caused that. But don't tell anybody these things keep them to yourself. To tell you the truth I don't want to know your secret spots and I don't want to tell the few I have. God help us if every spot on the map is fine tuned and 100% accurate 100% of the time.
both rodntube and zippy make really good points... But, I will say, that there are ways to improve the forecast and I'm working hard to get there.
You guys.... Never question the power of this site! If you don't like it - log off! Go sign up for Surfline and get ripped off! Check magicseaweed and decide off their forecasts. This site is free-of-charge and you're complaining? Drive/walk/bike to the beach I don't care, check a webcam or something, call a buddy who's there, but don't complain when some forecast is a little bit off! Read some weather patterns on your own for once. The one day I'm actually NOT at the beach, the one time I actually MISS a swell, I'm 200 miles form my home I cannot ride today so go out and enjoy it.
The value of any of the forecasting sites, be it Swell Info, Surfline, Magicseaweed, etc., is whether they provide somewhat accurate indications of the swell forecast. Then there is all the peripheral stuff that comes along with the site, whether it is full of adverts or other services to the user community. Magicseaweed doesn't cut it because the forecasts over inflate the swell size - some of the other features are useful. Surfline has become a huge bandwidth hog, is chock full of adverts, uses too much flashy web stuff, and quite frankly the quality of their forecasting has declined. And it has become rather expensive. Surfline apparently owns Buoyweather now, a site I prefer for monitoring forecasts, but it doesn't do a great job for the Mid-Atlantic (except for forecasting the big swells). Swell Info is a sweet middle ground that has bang-up accurate forecasts for the DelMarVa and continues to improve elsewhere. Being a free service, without overbearing amounts of adverts, it is up to its followers to provide usable, actionable feedback on the forecasts. We also get a number of other good services such as this forum.
