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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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

surfline is on management autopilot with terrible decision making people in charge doing things like showing you yesterday's waves and a human report at 2PM, thinking these are enticing ideas to get people to subscribe. The forecasters at SL know they are on a sinking ship. They should be using opensnow as a model to gain credibility and subscribers where you get daily, accurate, detailed forecasts and 4 friends can split subs for $15 each per year. Instead, surfline is continuing to try and ride their failed name using the rape customers as long as possible until we go bankrupt model.

Just guessing, but it seems like some large investment corp bought up SL and they are working to automate every aspect of it. I'll never understand why they changed up the poor to good to epic color scheme. they have the cam monopoly network.. thats pretty much it

Surfline "misses" every swell, especially same day forecasts. They are almost entirely automated and the automation they are using is not accurate. Typical Surfline forecast like yesterday will say 2-3ft when it's actually 2-4 occ 5ft. But on their own website for the local beaches they display the 20 mile buoy info but they don't use that information from that reading to forecast the day's wave heights. Yesterday the 20m was 3ft - 3.6ft at 9 to 10 seconds. Unless that is a NE or NNE swell a 3.5 wave at 10 seconds on the 20m buoy is gonna have 4-5ft heights on set waves. Yesterday was a bit NE not enough for the cape shadow to knock 2 feet off the waves like Surfline was showing.

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Heavy is sign of reliability

Forecasting has gotten horrendous. Daily forecasts are wrong more than 50% of the time.


As for Surfline, they are always a day off. Go to Windy and build your own predictions. They will be more accurate.

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I was right.

Surfline is just a live cam repository at this point. They can't forecast shit

Tom has it perfect. Checkityourself.com and its newer version for the younger generation checkityourdamnself.com.

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

Just go straight to the source, and thank the scientists at the NWS. NASA, and NOAA:

For wind, select 10m_wnd and then loop or whatever day you're interested in:
http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/model...TLANTIC&ps=area


Significant wave height, swell direction and period:
http://mag.ncep.noaa.gov/model...area=ATLANTIC&ps=area

The western Atlantic models are more zoomed in to our coast than the full Atlantic views linked above

Then gocheckityourself.com

Edited: 08/07/2025 at 08:45 AM by 3rdworldlover

Surfline can sometimes be OK a week or less in advance for distant swells (think Costa Rica to California) but seem flummoxed by our side of the Atlantic. Wind models showed likely fetch related to Dexter. Of course nothing happened here in flat Vero Beach.

Short-notice cheap air fares seem to have vanished this summer, but thanks in part to Surfline, I've snagged a couple of cheap trips to southern California, most recently last year's Labor Day. Left Saturday, returned Tuesday. Friday-Monday would have been expensive.

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wavewatcher - >ww - >wavewatcher, again

Disclaimer: Checkityourself.com is in no way affiliated with gocheckityourself.com or checkityourdamnself.com. They use entirely different sattelites, algorithms and super models. Standing side by side, these forecasters will give completely different and conflicting reports and observations. Your mileage may vary.

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add a signature since I'm here in profile anyway

Edited: 08/07/2025 at 04:06 PM by tom

LOL of that above.

If you aren't on facebook it is interesting seeing all the facebook meteorologist and the comments.

They are something else. They screen grab a model output that is ten days in the future and claim it as their own forecast. Then the comments of the know-it-alls and such with the conflicting agreements and disagreements. IT'S NOT EVEN A NAMED STORM YET PEOPLE.

Eastern Tropical Atlantic (AL97):
Shower and thunderstorm activity has persisted and continues to
show signs of organization with a well-defined area of low pressure
located just to the west of the Cabo Verde Islands. If these
structural trends continue, the system is likely to become a
tropical depression or storm, possibly as soon as later this
morning. Locally heavy rainfall and gusty winds are expected to
continue today across portions of the Cabo Verde Islands, and
interests there should monitor the progress of this system.
Regardless of development over the next couple of days, the system
is expected to continue moving westward to west-northwestward at 15
to 20 mph across the eastern and central tropical Atlantic.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...high...90 percent.
* Formation chance through 7 days...high...90 percent.