First off, no forecaster for anything is 100 percent accurate. Also, I don't subscribe to surfline. However, late last week I was telling some of my close friends that it looks like we will have NE swell on Monday from a possible storm off of Hatteras. The models were clearly showing a spin up with 30 knot NE winds off Hatteras. That's a no brainer we going to get a small NE swell from that.

I was trying to persuade my friends, one down in palm beach, to travel up. I don't like surfing alone and trying to help some friends get in the water. 3 other people I messaged were doubting thomas's also.

Their replies were that 'Surfline doesn't show anything'. I got sent a screen grab that they were calling Monday for 2 feet.

Then another case, Monday morning was not that crowded in the Satbe spots. I actually got a parking spot at lums which usually 100 percent full. I was like cool, maybe not too many people got the message. This morning (Tuesday) ALL THE PARKING LOTS were overflowing. A stark contrast. The coconut telegraph obviously was spread the news that the surf was up.

One friend on Facebook on a Monday morning post-surf report I did commented, "Surprise Swell". And, he lives in a beachside satbe condo.

I was like, hmmmm, How was it a surprise to some?

The common denominator is 3/4 of my friends have a surfline forecast pro subscription and were discounting what I was predicting. Not tooting my own horn here as I just wanted to surf with my friends but they didn't want to take the chance on bad surf due to surfline's possible missed forecast.

I don't and can't read the forecast section of surfline, but even this morning the daily report said 2 feet for Satellite. I just got out of the water and it was significant strong swell coming in. 3-4 feet and long lines and some good walls and very powerful. Obvious tropical storm swell.

Am I wrong? Did surfline miss the Dexter swell?

Looks like the model was low but the forecasters talked about it last week and I think had the new star things several days before that.

Edited: 08/05/2025 at 01:01 PM by ncsurf

I can't see that surfline vid, but looks from the title they were calling a swell. I wonder why my friends were saying surfline isn't showing much?

Must be a disconnect.

I'm not trying to bash surfline (well, maybe i am ) , they provide a great service, but some people only depend on that forecast and not looking at the real data.

There was a good wind fetch pointed at us Saturday and Sunday off of Hatteras and NHC named the storm when it hit 35mph later on Monday. So maybe just not having a named storm didn't raise eyebrows.



Which is ok, people are busy, just sparking a convo here.







Edited: 08/05/2025 at 01:26 PM by Central Floridave

Another thing I just thought about is a lot of the real data NDBC buoys are out of commish. Like specifically the 41010 120 miler, amongst others. Maybe the swell models are missing that data input.

I use to be an sys admin to NASA's weather models for launches and I remember those models were very dependent on real data. NOAAport wasn't getting injested and it was a major crises.

Garbage in Garbage out as Ye Olde Computer Science Cliche' goes!

I think Surflies missed it down here, called Tuesday bigger than Monday on Sunday
I had waist to chest lines to myself Monday morning on Jupiter island.
Pretty small today

Checkityourself.com was spot on. As usual.

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