Swell sites

What sites do you all use for swell prediction in the Santa Cruz area?

TIA.

MolBasser

Personally I use storm surf. Here is the SCruz bouy forecast:

http://www.stormsurf.com/cgi-bin/4cast.cgi?ID=enp.46042

You have the luxury of being able to test the accuracy by reading the forecast then looking out the window 

Personally I use storm surf. Here is the SCruz bouy forecast:

http://www.stormsurf.com/cgi-bin/4cast.cgi?ID=enp.46042

You have the luxury of being able to test the accuracy by reading the forecast then looking out the window 

Yeah, I have to climb on my roof first, but I can see it!   

MolBasser

bill, that one is not as good for developing "the sense".  I like the ones that present a map view. you want the gestalt.

for many years there was a buoy in the harbour mouth, this was the best predictor of surf in santa cruz.

it might still be there, but it is busted now.

it was an array buoy thus reported direction, amplitude and period, i.e. the full guacamole.

There is still a marker for that much beloved buoy on this swell page:

http://facs.scripps.edu/surf/nocal.html

this page is good for the gestalt of many buoys at once. you can click on the bouy markers for the details, but I usually
only click on the pt. reyes buoy or in years past, the santa cruz harbour bouy. but note the bouy is dead now. 

diablo canyon or the harvest bouy is okay for telling you
what is coming from the south.

the pt reyes bouy is also an array buoy and has direction spectrum, but it is less sensitive to the swells that can break well in santa cruz.
nothing north of about 305 will get into capitola and anything around that is well attenuated. 290 gets in fine.
from the south, 190 is about the cutoff.

Also highly useful is this one:

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/recent/model_images/monterey.png

note again it shows period and direction, but the period is inverted from the javascript display for the pt reyes bouy.

there is a corresponding one for the north coast boys:

http://cdip.ucsd.edu/recent/model_images/sf.png

This SF wind map is killer:

http://sfports.wr.usgs.gov/cgi-bin/wind/windbin.cgi

this monterey bay wind map is harder to read, but no less useful:

http://www.weather.nps.navy.mil/wx/latest_mbay.gif

Well, there you go, check those before you go and after you go and before you know it (well, after a decade or two)
you will know what the launch will be like before you get there.

Now I just need the same for lexington and fog over davenport and I'm good!

these are the tricks of surfers from the valley that like to surf 100 miles of coast from ocean beach to moss landing! and
if you get it wrong, well you drove an hour, you go in anyway,  .

J

I use this for general, longer-range planning.  It forecasts a week out.

http://facs.scripps.edu/surf/images/calanim.gif

It's not very precise, but has proven to be pretty accurate within 3-4 days, sometimes longer.

The forecast for this Sunday and thereafter changed today - got more swelly.

Lot of good ones there, and I think it's right that whatever you use, you need to compare to what you get on the water, so you can adjust to your own comfort level.
Here are the ones I'm used to checking:

Wetsand.com  -good "Report" section summarizing weather and swell "schedules", as well as in chart form

www.garlic.com/triblet/swell/warmglance.html - up to the hour graphic presentation of the current swells, has the advantage of showing you all the directions swells are rolling in from, as well as ht and period. Also has forecast graphics tied in.
 
Surfline.com  -brief free summary and lots of cams.

Santa Cruz Harbor cams- especially the"Harbor Beach"and "Harbor Entrance"  not a forecast, often too foggy to see much

Tom, I have been checking your lexington proxy, the bird farm.  I have yet to correlate but it has a lot of promise.

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=KCALOSGA14

probably a good idea to multiply the wind gust by a factor of 2 for out on the lake.

got any ideas for something that predicts the fog line? Some kind of surface temp map might be a good predictor, I have
not seen such a thing. it ought to  be something they could predict. I would like a map like the buoy page, or wind  maps,
but with foggy/not-foggy marked on it.

In years past, the fog line would often sit right at ano nueuvo. north of that, foggy, south of that, clear. right on it, windy as hell.

J

that monterey wind map is cool. similar to the ones we use in aviation.  i think that one is more accurate- the line points to the way the wind is blowing, and the lines sticking from the back of  it tell you the speed of the wind - each full line is 10 knots and each half line is 5 kts of wind.

paul