The Arctic Surf Forecast For Late August 2014

Regular readers adept at reading between lines may already have concluded that here in the Great White Con Ivory Towers we have been surreptitiously organising the world’s first ever Arctic Basin Big Wave Fantasy Surfing Contest (or GWCABBWFSC for short). We are now proud to announce that the long waiting period may now be almost over!

Here is the long range Arctic weather forecast from GFS 192 hours from now (courtesy of MeteoCiel):

gfsnh-0-192-20140819

 

and here is the ECMWF equivalent:

ECH1-192-20140819

 

There looks to be a certain amount of agreement there, so now let’s take a look at ECMWF for T+240h:

ECH1-240-20140819

 

If the forecast pans out (a very big IF this far out!) there’s an Arctic storm brewing with the isobars packed tight over all the open water in the Laptev Sea, pushing the potential swell through the East Siberian Sea and on into the Beaufort Sea before it crashes against the northernmost shores of North America.

We fondly imagine a Great White Con team containing the likes of Andrew Cotton:

Garrett McNamara:

and Maya Gabeira:

taking on the biggest waves ever recorded on camera off Alaska’s North Slope, each clad in their respective sponsors’ thickest, finest neoprene.

The opposing “Great Green Con” team will be composed of volunteers from amongst the serried ranks of fiddlers with the facts on Fleet Street such as Andrew Neil, David Rose and Christopher Booker, all clad in matching Polar Bear suits to keep the cold Arctic waters at bay:

SurfBearTo coin a phrase oft used in this particular portion of the blogosphere:

We’ll keep you posted!

2 thoughts on “The Arctic Surf Forecast For Late August 2014

  1. It’s now Wednesday August 20th. GFS and ECMWF are still aligned fairly well at T+192h. Here’s what ECMWF reveals for T+216h, which is Friday August 29th 2014:

    It looks like there’s still a chance of some swell heading for the North Slope

  2. It’s now Thursday August 21st. The GFS forecast for T+192h now shows Friday August 29th 2014:

    The NOAA’s WaveWatch III model only forecasts as far out as T+180. Here’s the current surf forecast for Alaskan waters on August 28th:

    Can you see the 2-3 m swell battering Wrangel Island and heading in the direction of Point Barrow? Here’s the current NOAA surf forecast for the beaches of Barrow, Pitt Point and Nulavik:

    WIND… S WINDS TO 10 KNOTS
    SURF HEIGHT… TO 1 F00T FOR ALL BEACHES.

    Finally, for the moment at least, here’s what the Barrow surfcam reveals this morning:

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