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New
England Surf Forecast Locations
How
to Create Your Own Surf Forecast
New England Water Temps
New
England Surf Shops
How to
Create Your Own Surf Forecast
Our
MoreBeach surf forecasts are generated by computer software and are
usually very accurate. But you may do better by checking out multiple
sources and applying discernment of your own experience and common
sense.
A good
firststep is to check the wave forecast from the US Navy known as FNMOC
WW3. The Wave Watch 3 forecast looks 6 days out and shows low
pressure systems as they build and move. It's interesting to see
hurricanes form off the coast of Africa, move across the Atlantic and
then up the Eastern Seaboard.From a New England surfer's perspective, a
beautiful WAM forecast will show a massive low parked some 300 miles
off Cape Cod for a couple of days combined with gentle offshore
breezes. Wave heights are shown in colors and a scale (in feet) appears
at the bottom of each image. There's an image for every 12 hour period.
Note that "00Z" means midnight and "12Z" means noon... Greenwich Mean
Time. That's 6 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time.
There
are FNMOC forecasts for the entire globe. One reason California gets
better surf than New England is that California receives swells that
are generated off the coast of Antarctica! You can see how this on the
global wave forecasts. Here's a link to all of the FNMOC WW3 charts.
After
checking the chart the next step is to check out the wind forecast. Big
waves are generated by onshore winds during a Nor'easter; but the
surfing only gets good when the winds turn offshore and cleans things
up. Go to Weather.com,
enter the zip code for the beach you're interested in, and click on the
10-day forecast. Then, on the bar labeled "Forecast Conditions," set
the drop down menu to"wind speed." This will display wind direction and
speed. The wind direction means where the wind is blowing from.
Northeast means onshore winds on Cape Cod and offshore winds on the
southern coasts of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. THis also applies
to much of Rhode Island and Maine. If you see a hurricane offshore and
5-15 mph winds out of the west, then it's a good time to plan a few
days for epic surf almost anywhere in New England.
Surf-Forecast.com,
based in the UK, offers great forecasts giving wave height and wind
speed for almost every major surf break in the world. Note that wave
height and wind speed are shown in metric units - meters and kilometers
per hour.
And, of
course, we think very highly of Magic
Seaweed. They provide surf forecasts for many of the world's
major surf breaks and supply our surf forecast charts at MoreBeach.
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New England Forecast Locations
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Rhode Island
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Massachusetts
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New Hampshire
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Maine
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New England water temps
vary from swimsuit warm to wetsuit cold. Not surprisingly, waters in
southern New England on the coasts of Connecticut, Rhode Island and SE
Massachusetts (around 72F in July and August) are warmer than northern
New England on the coasts of New Hampshire and Maine (July and August
usually see 62F up to Bar Harbor, 51F for Eastport). Massachusetts from
Cape Cod north generally stays in the mid 60's.
It's
interesting and useful to note that, for Cape Cod's ocean beaches in
particular, water temperatures can vary wildly from day to day during
the summer. In a 24 hour period, the temperature can drop from 75F to
55F. This happens when there's been a heat wave with light and/or
onshore winds followed by strong offshore winds. Warm weather with
onshore winds creates a pool of warm surface water along the shoreline.
When winds blow offshore, warm water is pushed out to sea and cold
water is pulled up to the surface, commonly called upwelling. When
planning a day at a New England beach it's a good idea to note which
way the wind has been blowing.
The
graph below shows average water temperatures for New England.
Average Coastal Water temps for New England Coast:
http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/dsdt/cwtg/natl.html
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