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(Previous) 05/02/2005 (Next)
Good S Swell headed for Central America.
A recent storm near South America has set up a punchy new south swell for Central America this weekend.
Continued below...
LOLA has several different filters to track and predict upcoming swells. Shown here is the deepwater height tab, which will break swells down into their height in deepwater, before being altered in shallower water close to shore. SSW swell of 4' at 15 seconds is due by Saturday, indicated by the purple line. What does 4' of deepwater swell translate to as a breaking wave, you may ask? For many breaks it will mean an overhead set wave, while top breaks that can really focus longer period swell thanks to local bathymetry can double and even triple the deepwater swell for set waves up to double overhead. It might be time to buy a ticket to Costa Rica, don't ya think?

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LOLA is the world's only automated global surf forecasting tool. LOLA can forecast waves right down the street, or it can predict surf conditions at the top spots around the globe - breaks like Tavarua, Tahiti and Jeffrey's Bay.

LOLA uses the NOAA Wavewatch III engine (running on our own computers) with Surfline-modified data from various wind models (AVN, GFS, MRF). Then LOLA combines this information with empirical data we've programmed into her gained from over 30 years of surf and weather analysis here at Surfline.

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