Swells....

[Shane]

Thanks to all who helped put together and put-on last night's chalk talk - I really appreciate the learnings and feel I gained a starting point to understanding and predicting water conditions. The next step is the fun part - to get out and see if I'm right!

For whatever reason though, one of the discussions I found particularly interesting was around swell and the relationships between the speed, depth, frequency, and length. Given the exciting ocean bottom we paddle above, it seems to me that understanding and relating these factors all together in some rule of thumbs would be beneficial.

I found the following site which discusses just this:

http://www.surfline.com/surfology/surfology_forecast2.cfm

3 interesting calculation points in the article:

- Swell speed is: 1.5 times the swell period

- Single wave speed is: 2 times the swell speed

- Ocean depth of a swell is: swell period squared times 2.56

(times 2.5 plus some extra for my brain)

There is also good learning from the above link about "shoaling" that drives home the importance of understanding swell.

If anyone has some 'rule of thumbs', it would be great to hear them. Also, validating the above info. against real experience would be interesting to hear as well.

_Shane

"Would a knife help protect you against a ‘curious’ shark? I don’t know but I would like the option." - Trevor Gardner