Checking out some waves

Written by Sarah Tuesday 4/23:

This morning was the Cha’ba buoy deployment! As I mentioned in my previous post, I got up at midnight to start my PRISM data collection shift, so I was awake to watch the sunrise up over the Olympic Mountains (and a cloud bank) at about 6:30am. We really couldn’t have asked for better weather and wave conditions for a buoy deployment!

 

Using this photo, I can compare both forecasts and data available on the NANOOS Visualization System with the wave conditions that I saw.

Looking first what was forecasted, I pulled up a forecast plot from the model called OSU Wave Forecast.

 

What you are looking at is a map of the Washington Coast with the wave forecast shown in the colors over the ocean. The wave height is indicated by color, with completely calm, flat in purple, and massive, winter storm-like waves in red. You can see on the map that there are four buoy icons. Each of these icons show the actual location of buoys. The buoy farthest to the north is a NOAA buoy off the coast of Neah Bay; the second one down is the Cha’ba buoy; the third is a NOAA buoy at Cape Elizabeth; and the one farthest south is a wave monitoring buoy off of Grays Harbor.

Since I took the above photo at 6:23am, I selected the 6:00am forecast plot since the forecasts are available in 1 hour increments. Seeing the Cha’ba deployment site on the map (second buoy down from the top), you can see that the waves were forecasted to be about 3ish feet high. This may seem high to you, but 3ft waves is relatively calm and just barely rocks the ship, if at all.

Next I wanted to see if the observed data from the Cape Elizabeth buoy matched the forecast, as well as to see what the actual swell height was.

 

This graph shows you wave height in feet over a 24 hour period from a 1:00pm Mon 4/22 to 1:00pm Tue 4/23. At 06:00 (or 6am), you can see that the swell or wave height is about 2.5ft, so very similar to the forecast.

I was able to watch the buoy deployment from Observation Deck 2, which means that I was two levels above the floor of the ship. Great birds eye view of the deployment!