East Coast
A key indicator of current wave conditions can be found in the stream of data from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's network of buoys. NOAA's overview of sea conditions in the Northeast is laid out in a clickable buoy station map; the Southeast is similarly monitored.
Long Island's breaks are pretty well covered by surf cams. Bunger has one pointed at Gilgo beach and a weather digest -- Bunger's Gilgo Surf Cam. Surfer Jim's Webcam has the distinction of being Long Island's FIRST wavecam and one of the most reliable.
New Jersey's coast is watched over by a battery of cams. Get the overview from our pal Ed at row2k. Heritage Surf Shop sporadically maintains NJsurfcam2 at Sea Isle. While The Coastal Monitoring Network and Stevens Tech bring us these shots of Avalon, NJ
For ocean forecasting, it's hard to beat SurfInfo's excellent repackaging of the Navy data in the Five-Day Atlantic model. Use it in conjunction with NOAA's experimental wind and swell models and you've got an accurate picture of wave conditions up to 72 hours out. Or see them all run together in this hypnotic NOAA animation. Scripps Oceanographics also serves up a snapshot of current Atlantic Hurricane activity and projected tracks. A new contender on the scene is Wavewatch, Northeast, which does a good job of crunching data and spitting out groovy Flash forecast movies.
For more detailed weather info see:
- GEOS 8 - sat pics from U. of Wisconsin
- Intellicast- general weather beta for the US and the world
- Penn State's Offshore Weather consolidates lots of sources, as does their Northeastern Weather page
- Rutgers does its part with The COOLroom
- And Columbia's Lamont-Doherty weather pod provides more data.
West Coast
Apart from Surfline's and Wavewatch's, impressive network of cameras and reports, there are a number of wave cameras aimed at West Coast breaks. In Washington and Oregon, see Northwest Waves for the Golden State, see SurfLink.
The US Navy's servers are harder to find than their fleet of subs, but here's the latest location of FNMOC, the Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanographic Center.
Once again, NOAA comes up with the goods on their clickable station map for the Northwest; for SoCal surfers NOAA provides a map of the Southwest data points.
Scripps continues to supply top-quality oceanographic recording and forecast tools at the CDIP. Additionally, Scripps crunches CDIP and NOAA data into a west coast buoy graph, which gives a point-by-point picture of Pacific action.
"Know Before You Go" is the motto of Huntington Beach-based Surfline and their collection of reporters, cams and forecast models has emerged as THE go-to site for a wave check.
Low-tech, but effective, Surfin' Santa Cruz keeps Navy WAM images at the ready.
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's main site also offers a wealth of weather data.
Not to be discounted, the Weather Underground assembles lots of marine weather images.
