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(Previous) 03/20/2006 (Next)
Spring Swell Heading to the Islands.
Those nice bright colors erupting off Japan spell fun surf along Hawaii's North Shore this weekend.
Continued below...
Since seas in a fetch are a chaotic mess, wrought with overlapping directions, wave heights and periods, we're mostly concerned with wave energy at periods that actually have a chance of surviving large distances. In this case, we've filtered out everything less than 14 seconds.

Short period waves are damped out quickly after leaving the wave generating area -- all but disappearing after a thousand miles or so of travel, because of that, we want to isolate these longer periods and "watch" them move over the ocean visually. Notice the massive difference by clicking the ALL Periods tab. This is the common view on the Internet. Very Misleading.

Now, notice the choices here: what, where, and how. These are your starting points. Right now the T>13 seconds tab is selected, meaning periods less than 14 seconds are omitted.

One possible wrench for this weekend's swell is a bummer wind pattern at the same time...we'll be watching this closely. Charlie Fox

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