National Weather Service Wave Forecasting

Rutgers and MARACOOS are working with NOAA Weather Forecasting Office (WFO) Philadelphia to develop wave measurements from High Frequency (HF) radar.  The HF radars traditionally provide surface current measurements that are utilized by NOAA and US Coast Guard.  Another measurement that is under development is wave height, period and direction.  Recently WFO Philadelphia utilized HF radar data to analyze the swell from Hurricane Larry and forecaster Nicholas Carr mentioned it in his rip current forecast discussion.  They also compared HF radar measurements with buoy observations in May 2021 (see below) and the HF radar retrievals compared favorably with the buoy observations.