how come the swell looks more east in central jersey than south jersey ie manasquan bouy is reading 108 when Atlantic city reads 128 ?
You must be looking at virtual buoys. I'm sure the Del. buoy is not equiped w/ wave direction instrumentation since it never provides that specific type of infor. Virgina buoy does. As for the Manasquan bouy, never heard of one.
From what I'm seeing, it looks like too much East angle in the forecasts for this one for North/Central NJ. Unless predictions change, with a 15 sec period there's gonna be a lot of closeouts.
long period swell is greatly affected by the ocean bottom/continential shelf. central jersey shelf generally faces ESE while the shore from AC south generally faces SSE. When long period offshore swell hits the shelf, the tendancy is for the swell lines to bend and become parallel with the shelf orientation. So its sounds like in your example the swell had been bent 20 degrees. I couldnt find a diagram for the east coast, but notice how this diagram shows a straight west swell (the blue lines) bending in nearly shore parallel in california...
great model...that could seriously be reversed for nj.. with mavericks being manasquan inlet and south of mavericks being monmouth county
i think these images can give you a good idea of the offshore canyon called "the hudson river canyon" which is part of the new york/new jersey bight
good pics, its easy to see now why southern NJ handles those long period groundswells much better than up north where the canyon gets in the way
im pretty the cove (at sandy hook) goes off at times and most know of it. but ive never been there, nor plan on it and so i dont know what the good swell direction and what not is
if you dont know what the cove at sandy hook is, you might as well not be a surfer in nj... if you are referring to me
