By chance, last week I ended up next to a NOAA guy on a ferry ride to a meeting at Stone Lab. Turned out he was NOAA's chief hydrologist and in charge of wind and wave forecasts for Great Lakes. When he found out I was a fisherman, talk turned to the wave forecasts. Very nice guy (and smart guy) and he was very interested in how I used the forecasts, what formats I liked, and what was important data. I shared how important a good forecast is to someone traveling a distance to the lake as I do, and in making a go/no go decision, and some of the frustrations fisherman/boaters see. He asked a lot of questions. He also shared several things that I learned:

1. NOAA is developing on a new wave forecast computer model. They are aware the wave forecasts need improvement and working on that.

2. The Western Basin is the hardest place in the entire Great Lakes to forecast.

3. The most important factor in an accurate wave forecast model is a very precise wind direction reading. Unlike land, which has multiple weather stations in every county, and real time information, on the lake they have to forecast from a much more limited number of stations and real time data bases.

4. They are moving to give a wave range, rather than a single wave height in their forecast.

5. With respect the buoy readings, when they give a wave height of say 1.5 feet at Lorain buoy, that buoy reading represents the "upper 2/3rds of the average waves". So with 1.5 reading one would increase it by 1/3 which would give a height of 1.5 plus .5 equals 2. But then that is the "average waves" so some would be bigger than 2 foot. Thus the rough rule of thumb many use to take the reading and double it is probably a pretty good figure. A 1.5 reading would be 1-3's or 2-3's.

6. Lastly I asked him about IWindsurf and found it interesting that they base their forecasts on NOAA's data.

It was an interesting conversation and the gentleman gave me his card and asked me to share any ideas or concerns I had with him.