If we could just get the surf to coincide with the sun.
SURF:
Not much surf or sun to speak of this week. Just background SW and small NW windswell today. Tomorrow looks to be the same with overcast conditions and waist high waves from the NW/SW once the tide fills in mid-morning. We start to see some new SW fill in though by Sunday for chest high sets in far north county- but the beaches will still be overcast. Charts also show a little NW windswell too. Beaches should be peaky.
FORECAST:
SW continues to build on Monday/Tuesday for shoulder high sets and by Wednesday into Thursday we've got overhead sets most everywhere. Looks to be a good few days of surf. The SW dies into next weekend as small NW windswell fills in towards Sunday.
WEATHER:
If there's May Gray and June Gloom, what do you call a July with no sun? July Deny? July Good-bye? July Dull Sky? (I trademarked all 3 of those by the way). Whatever it is, I'm starting to think our summer will be mostly overcast. Case in point- this weekend. Another trough is headed our way this afternoon and will thicken up our clouds this weekend for cool conditions and drizzle. I guess the atmosphere is trying to make up for a lackluster winter. High pressure may build slightly late next week for a little bit of sun at the beaches- but no real warm up. Basically don't expect summer-like weather until August. Make sure to keep up to date on the weather this weekend at Twitter/North County Surf.
BEST BET:
Wednesday/Thursday with peaking SW and MAYBE some sun by then.
NEWS OF THE WEEK:
Sailing history is full of tall tales of monster-sized 'rogue' waves -- huge, towering walls of water that seemingly rise up from nothing to dwarf, then drown, vessel and crew. Rogue waves can measure eight times higher than the surrounding seas and can strike in otherwise calm waters, with virtually no warning. Now a prediction tool developed by MIT engineers may give sailors a 2-3 minute warning of an incoming rogue wave, providing them with enough time to shut down essential operations on a ship or offshore platform. The tool, in the form of an algorithm, sifts through data from surrounding waves to spot clusters of waves that may develop into a rogue wave. Depending on a wave group's length and height, the algorithm computes a probability that the group will turn into a rogue wave within the next few minutes.
"It's precise in the sense that it's telling us very accurately the location and the time that this rare event will happen," says Themis Sapsis, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. "We have a range of possibilities, and we can say that this will be a dangerous wave, and you'd better do something. That's really all you need."
Like many complex systems, the open ocean can be represented as a chaotic mix of constantly changing data points. To understand and predict rare events such as rogue waves, scientists have typically taken a leave-no-wave-behind approach, in which they try to simulate every individual wave in a given body of water, to give a high-resolution picture of the sea state, as well as any suspicious, rogue-like activity. This extremely detailed approach is also computationally expensive, as it requires a cluster of computers to solve equations for each and every wave, and their interactions with surrounding waves.
"It's accurate, but it's extremely slow -- you cannot run these computations on your laptop," Sapsis says. "There's no way to predict rogue waves practically. That's the gap we're trying to address."
Sapsis and Cousins devised a much simpler, faster way to predict rogue waves, given data on the surrounding wave field.
In previous work, the team identified one mechanism by which rogue waves form in unidirectional wave fields. They observed that, while the open ocean consists of many waves, most of which move independently of each other, some waves cluster together in a single wave group, rolling through the ocean together. Certain wave groups, they found, end up "focusing" or exchanging energy in a way that eventually leads to an extreme rogue wave.
"These waves really talk to each other," Sapsis says. "They interact and exchange energy. It's not just bad luck. It's the dynamics that create this phenomenon."
In their current work, the researchers sought to identify precursors, or patterns in those wave groups that ultimately end up as rogue waves. To do this, they combined ocean wave data available from measurements taken by ocean buoys, with nonlinear analysis of the underlying water wave equations.
Sapsis and Cousins used the statistical data to quantify the range of wave possibilities, for a given body of water. They then developed a novel approach to analyze the nonlinear dynamics of the system and predict which wave groups will evolve into extreme rogue waves.
They were able to predict which groups turned rogue, based on two parameters: a wave group's length and height. The combination of statistics and dynamics helped the team identify the length-scale of a critical wave group, which has the highest likelihood of evolving into a rogue wave. Using this, the team derived a simple algorithm to predict a rogue wave based on incoming data. By tracking the energy of the surrounding wave field over this length-scale, they could immediately calculate the probability of a rogue wave developing.
"Using data and equations, we've determined for any given sea state the wave groups that can evolve into rogue waves," Sapsis says. "Of those, we only observe the ones with the highest probability of turning into a rare event. That's extremely efficient to do."
Sapsis says the team's algorithm is able to predict rogue waves several minutes before they fully develop. To put the algorithm into practice, he says ships and offshore platforms will have to utilize high-resolution scanning technologies such as LIDAR and radar to measure the surrounding waves.
"If we know the wave field, we can identify immediately what would be the critical length scale that one has to observe, and then identify spatial regions with high probability for a rare event," Sapsis says. "If you are performing operations on an aircraft carrier or offshore platform, this is extremely important."
I just want to know if the algorithm works for Kelly's wave pool or if all the waves are the same...
PIC OF THE WEEK:
I'm always amazed at pics of waves with people just sitting there looking at the surf. What the heck are they waiting for? Go shred already!
Keep Surfing,
Michael W. Glenn
That's My Name, Don't Wear It Out
Dated Mrs. Roper In High School
Walking Encyclopedia of Surfing
