With the ever growing population of surfers in New England it is becoming increasingly important that surfers know and abide by the rules of Surfer's Etiquette. Whether you are a beginner or and an advanced surfer, read it, learn it and tell everyone you know to do the same. 

The Naval Oceanographic Office's "Oceanographic Features Analysis", now there's an unnecessary mouthful, it is "just" a temperature map. It shows our coastal water temperatures in an neat easy toread graphical format. Keep in mind that the temps are in Celsius.

During Hurricane season the top sources of tropical information are Weather Underground, The Weather Channel and the National Hurricane Center (NHC). They each have their advantages: the Underground presents the potential tracks the best, the weather.com adds their own analysis to the NHC, and the NHC presents all the public advisories "straight from the horses mouth."

NOAA's and FNMOC's WW3 wave height models are both indispensable tools for surfers. Both are based on NOAA's Wavewatch 3 model, but use different weather models to base their calculations on. The FNMOC's version is somewhat more reliable size-wise, while NOAA's version (shown) gives a better presentation of direction and period. Both are presented for easy reference on the Forecast page.

The National Weather service is working on a near shore, short-term, wave forecast for New England. While there are still a few glitches this product is looking increasingly promising and is rapidly becoming the "must use tool" for those looking to know if surf's up. Roll over the times in the "Combined Seas" column to see it at work.

The Navy's climate anomaly chart will give you and great overview on whether our coastal waters are warmer or colder than expected.