DailyStoke.com: What is the most frequently misunderstood element of surf forecasting made by regular surfers who are trying to understand the forecasts?
Socalsurf.com: That is sort of a hard one to pin down…there are a lot of confusing concepts in forecasting… How swell direction (and swell period) interact with local geography and bathometry is usually something that is hard for people to wrap their heads around. It is one of those, “wait…what do you mean that this spot breaks on a 290-degree swell…but only part of the time? I hate you Adam”, type of concepts.
Really though I think that the “swell model” is one of the most misleading aspects of surf forecasting. Most people look at NOAA’s Wavewatch-III in some form or another…usually it is in some sort of map-image or graph form. While it is mostly accurate there are some weaknesses to it. For one if it gets bad data, say a storm doesn’t produce as much wind as it is forecasting, then the whole output is corrupted…every forecast that would have been affected by that storm is now wrong…they may adjust the model on the next forecast run but if you only look at the output every 24 hours then you could completely miss or overcall a swell.
Another thing to watch is the “output point” itself…some people try to look at models that aren’t showing geographically relevant data…so for example someone in Santa Barbara looks at someone’s pretty graph, which is generated using a point just offshore of Oceanside. In the summer it would show lots of Southern Hemi swell that would never hit the beach thanks to the Channel Islands.
Lastly is that the model doesn’t really account for nearshore shoaling…it gives you a pretty decent deepwater wave height but it won’t do a great job of showing what the actual rideable size will be when it hits the beach.
Don’t get me wrong…overall it is usually a very good resource for surf forecasting but it can’t be the only tool that you use. Always try to back up the model with empirical data from satellites, buoys, and observed conditions.
Adam Wright runs www.socalsurf.com and is a professional
meteorologist. He’s been a surf forecaster since 1999, and covers SoCal and Baja for Wavewatch.com as well as the weekly snow and surf outlooks for Fuel.tv. DailyStoke happens to think there is no better resource online to understanding waves, in plain English, than Socalsurf.com. Learn more there, now!
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