MSW Surf Forecasting

WE’VE moved to a weekly update for the website software – some weeks big, some small, but we’ll let you know what’s changing here, as always any feedback appreciated. 1st Feb 2012 Forecast Speed We’ve improved the speed of the new forecast layout, we’ll be launching this as the default forecast in the next week or two. The old forecast will be available for the foreseeable but we can promise you (and we get to do this for a living) that your ability to get to the right beach at the right time will be much improved with the new page. Facebook / MSW accounts We added ‘login with facebook’ so we [...]

As we work on a complete overhaul of the MSW chart player here’s a taste of some of the new charts, the changes are mostly subtle and include just straight up looking prettier, along with some small feature additions for the surf forecast connoisseur: Our favourite change is to the wind chart, laying the sea level pressure over the top of the wind gives storm spotters and forecast geeks an easier time figuring out where surf making swells are likely to occur. New swell height chart uses a new colour scale that makes differentiation at the large end of the scale easier (with new colours purple through to black) and [...]

We’ve rather stuck our foot in it this morning ‘calling out’ North Devon protesters to the proposed Atlantic Array but we’re still struggling to understand the concerns of surfers in North Devon (specifically relating to waves – there might be a host of other legitimate concerns outside our area of expertise). Unless the proposal has changed and the map here is no longer accurate the array at worst would shadow swells from North of approximately 291 Degrees. Any one familiar with surfing in the area will know that the short fetch from this direction means very low period wind swell, with all significant swells of any kind coming from the [...]

Our new forecast page attempts to bridge the gap between offshore swells (the source of all our surf and the key data needed to figure out your local waves) and the actual surf by adding a ‘surf’ column to the forecast which should reflect the actual breaking waves on the beach. This makes the forecast hugely more useful for the average, relatively inexperienced surfer (or surf forecaster) but does have some limitations (a lot more information here). Not least of all where we’re pretty happy with the idea that a 6ft wave is about head high but for a great many of you this same 6ft wave is double over [...]