68 foot seas forcast for Thursday AL/MS coast

[c5Camille]

This is a graphic for today through Sunday.
They are forcasting 68 feet assuming 85mph
winds... the official NHC is forcasting 115+
for this area.
The bouy of referance is 64 mile south of Mobile Bay.

http://buoy.ocens.net/wxnav.jsp?region= ... -5&units=e

this graph is subject to change...

[jwelch5]

A more appropriate headline would be "seas" instead of "waves." Implies that waves 6oish feet might be crashing onshore.

[USCG_Hurricane_Watcher]

Good call jwelch...seas are 68 ft; not trying to downplay it AT ALL, but you wave height is also measured from trough to crest vertically, not sea level to crest. On top of that, because of the shallow nature of some parts of the gulf, most of that will lose it's energy as it pushes inshore and the shelf breaks it up. The buoy everyone's referencing is pretty far offshore. Wave height is a function of duration, water depth, fetch and wind speed...I'm still curious to see what the tide is going to be at landfall.

It definitely going to be rough, no two ways about it...unless you're a qualified surfman who happens to own your own motor lifeboat, you shouldn't be logging any underway time for the next three days.

[mitchell]

The wave models do a terrible job once the waves are over 20 feet. They had 70 foot seas off the East Coast in Fabian last year when 25 - 30 was about it.. Reasons:

1) The wave models don't account for shoaling (depth-limited breaking) Remember, in 40 feet off water, the theoretical maximum possible wave height is about 30 feet. Thats 10 - 50 miles miles off the central hguulf coast

2) The wave models don't account for the muddy bottom dampening. It has a huge effect limiting nearshore wave heights in AL, Miss, LA areas.

3) The models can't handle wind speeds above about 50 mph well and simply extrapolate which overestimates wave height.

[c5Camille]

I hope your right...
i know the same model forcast 30 to 40
feet for Georges and i saw the bouy registar
35 foot swells. Went to the beach 36 hours
before the storm and saw 15 to 20 foot waves
breaking.

[mitchell]

I hope your right...
i know the same model forcast 30 to 40
feet for Georges and i saw the bouy registar
35 foot swells. Went to the beach 36 hours
before the storm and saw 15 to 20 foot waves
breaking.

Thats about the max