Kids, there was once a time without internet surf forecats and cell phones to clue in your buds on the current surf conditions. Brave men used to sit down, for hours at a time, watching The Weather Channel waiting for the right surface map to air. Soaking up the local forecast and admiring Jill Brown or Bill Keenely's legs, while searching west and south for any materializing low pressure systems. Oh, the old surface maps with the big "H" and "L" and those crazy isobars....... Kids, I suggest you rediscover this lost art. I do feel for you because The Weather Channel isn't what it used to be. They got rid of most of the original on-air talent and seem to focus more on shows about Alaskan Coast Gaurds and tornadoes. Hey Zues, they even have a voice-over interferring with the local forecast music which is a real bummer. Kids, Jen Car***no and Stephanie Abrams are pretty cute so don't let your mommas catch you being perverted, ok. You'll see threads on this site with dudes complaining that this site botched the swell forecast...THIS IS NOT A PERFECT SCIENCE !! Rely on your own local knowledge, your new found Weather Channel skills and let SwellInfo be of assistance to you. A few times this past fall.......fall was consistent as heck wasn't it........this site predicted 0-1 foot. With my years of Weather Channel viewing, I knew not to heed this prediction, and I scored 3'-4' average to crappy surf !!! WOOO HOOOO...
True indeed... Sure, I've got Swellinfo and Surfline bookmarked like everybody else. But more often than not I turn to those other web pages.... filled with numbers and funny symbols... charts and graphs... tables of data... to make my own predictions. Why, I can even tell you about what time high tide is just by looking at the moon, which comes in handy, believe it or not. And I take more than a little pride in nailing one that the Big Guys miscalled... or just missed. That, along with daily surfchecks to keep an eye on the sandbars, makes up what we all know as "local knowledge." But I'm pretty sure there's LOTS of guys... even a lot of the young ones... that can do the same. (As in... who else knew Monday and Tuesday were not gonna be "chest high"?)
only radio that works in my car is the weather radio. i make people lisen to it! anyone every Dial-A-buoy? i used to all the time. now i can check the web page on my phone..
It's good to know how to understand buoys, but telling someone they have to know how to read charts and predict hurricane paths these days is like hearing someone tell me why a record player is better than an Ipod.
Vinyl will always be far superior to digitized music. Celestial navigation will always be superior to GPS. Being in tune with your local spots will always be superior to just looking on the internet.
SJB has to be the oldest grumpiest SOB this site has had....but I have to agree, I do miss those isobars...cheer up SJB! You grumpy old basterd.
Dudes, you know them weather stations that have that deadpan voice and the way they broadcast the weather makes you feel like your way out there, even if you're just sitting in a hotel room in Cape Cod............and even a simple storm seems exciting......some pre-storm hoopla to get the juices flowing. Pretending you're in Alaska listening for crucial pieces of weather info......the clouds......the cold.......the snow...... all falling in place to make everything seem mysterious and adventurous......Then heading down Nauset way and geting some five foot semi-shore pound bubs..........Yeah you know what I'm talking about. Anyone who wants to fund an Iceland trip...I'm game. Or anyone who has a boat......northern Maine has untapped potential......Lobsters man........The largest Lobster was caught in Nova Scotia at around 44 pounds. Nova Scotia kicks booty. Canadians are the coolest. Hey if you live in the Eastern Time Zone, tune into your local NPR station at midnight.....They play BBC news from England man......and you can lay there after a night of bath salts and cough syrup and pretend you are a London commuter waking up in the morning(they are five hours ahead of ETZ). Really try it, it's pretty cool. If you are an upbeat person you can act all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, with a British accent. If you hate your life, you can act grumpy and pissed, with a British accent......cursing the arrival of a new day. Cheers.....
Sniffer, you are totally misreading me......I'm not grumpy at all....A bit confused, maybe. But I'm not grumpy at all. I've been laughing at the conversations I've been having with myself all day. Oh Sniffer when I asked you how 7-11 was, I wasn't being insulting, insinuating that you were a kook who was relegated to 7-11. I just asked because, quite frankly, it is Ship Bottom's most infamous spot. Sniffer, I am not grumpy......Yeah I'm bored with Jersey surf....but I'm not angry, man.
I've been wanting to do this for a while but havent had the chance. Where do you guys suggest I start I don't know the first thing about forecasting waves besides for clicking my swellinfo bookmark
I have two of them... one I keep on the (shhhh....) boat. I still get the creeps listening to that robot voice... maybe because it reminds me of a time when I was huddled in tent in the dark on a deserted barrier island with a serious storm bearing down. But that voice is still so ominous... even when it's saying it's only one foot.
I remember when the weekly planner charts on TWC were all I had. These days I cross-reference a couple of surf sites along with some NOAA pages and local knowledge to forecast surfable waves. The technology we have today is pretty sick and convenient (all the maps, cams, charts, and other stuff right on our phones). Did I say phone? I can’t believe how many functions my "phone" has. In like 1991 I would need thousands of dollars worth of assorted gear to equal my 2011 phone that slips into my pocket. Despite the usefulness and convenience of 2012 technology, the data, software, hardware, people, etcetera have the ability of distorting what’s really going down. What did surfers do before The Weather Channel? Listen to NOAA marine radio only? I guess I could see why some surfers younger then I don't check all the same stuff I do. Younger surfers never had to go through the same "forecast" process as us older surfers. They have this sweet, color coded, week long, interactive swell chart that’s one click away (no offence Swell Info, its awesome). The best tools are the ones we were born with and the operating system is our brain.
Wow this brought back some memories. I remember laying in a tent in the Frisco campground listening to the robot voice on the weather radio say "long period swell". The voice said that for 4 nights straight, and for four days straight we drove the beach and found sandbars to our selfs and surfed all day....awesome trip right here on the east coast.
OMG , I was watching The Weather Channel and one of their new editions couldn't even read the teleprompter. Horrible. We all need to petition TWC to bring back the old gaurd. Especially Bill Keneeley. He was balls dudes. Dave Shwartz wasn't no slouch either. And we all miss Cheryl Lemke. Dudes spend some time learning about metereology. It will help you.......Plus it's interesting. I love you all
