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MAKE THE CALL
Top East Coast forecasters chosen in Red Bull's Project Swell
Think you have what it takes to be a surf forecaster? This past fall, Red Bull's Project Swell challenged college students' surf knowledge, meteorology skills and passion for the sea in a real world situation -- forecasting for the New York and North Carolina Red Bull Ice Break Qualifiers.
Over fifty students from up and down the East Coast submitted their forecasts online every four days for over two months and had their predictions scored by the experts here at Surfline based on the day's actual conditions.
The four criteria for judging, in order of importance were: 1. Quantitative. They predicted the wind speed, direction, surf height and conditions and whether to run the contest or not. Surfline’s east coast forecaster Mark Willis and the rest of the judging team had formulas to grade based on how far off they were. 2. Accuracy and clarity of discussions. Did they nail conditions? Did they differentiate between long and short interval swell? 3. Professionalism and grammar. Like, "How embarrassed would I be if this forecast was posted on Surfline?" Willis explains for this one. And finally, 4. What tools they used and why they used them. As Willis says, "Do they live in 'model model land' and not mention any observational data?"
So, how'd they do?
"They had a hard time with multiple swells and an especially hard time calling groundswell from distant sources," Willis explained. "Another big problem was the whole concept of 'exposure' to different swell directions along with which winds went best with the different regions to produce clean surf."
One of the standouts, Tommy Van Horn of Florida State University, agreed. "Not having surfed Long Island made it most difficult," he said. "Because when you experience waves and weather at a place it makes it so much easier to forecast for that specific place."
Another less obvious, though equally important, aspect to surf forecasting is communication. "A lot of people had a real struggle with their communication of saying when it was going to be good or bad," Mark said.
After much deliberation, the top ten students have now been chosen -- and they get to attend a Surfology practicum from June 10th-15th in Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. At the practicum, students will spend five days learning about weather and wave forecasting from the best in the business -- our very own Mark Willis and Adam Wright. Stay tuned for the full report.
2005 RED BULL PROJECT SWELL WINNERS
Daniel Curran - Harvard University
Robert Hiensch - Middlebury College
Graham Hunley - University of Florida
Guy Nester - California University of Pennsylvania
Carianne Carstater - California University of Pennsylvania
Tommy Van Horn - Florida State University
Kevin Maloney - Florida State University
Tammie "Ocean" Priselac - Cape Fear Community College
Matthew Porcelli - Penn State University
Dennis Murphy - SUNY Stonybrook
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Contest guidelines
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Surfline's East Coast surf forecast
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Marcus Sanders
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