On Monday (3/22/21), NOAA decommissioned the Wavewatch III wavemodel. This is the trusty model all of us have been using for at least the past 15+ years.
It's replacement was activated at the same time. The new model called GFS-Wave is a revised incarnation of the Wavewatch III model, but now it will be running inside the Global Forecast System (GFS) weather model GFSv16. And better yet, it will be running at 9 times the resolution of the old model (0.16666 degrees per grib square versus 0.5 degs).
The net effect is more accuracy.
Here a link to the details and more here and here.
The transition on Stormsurf was mostly complete as of Tues AM (3/23) with the hi-res format raw grib files being processed now to produce the variety of products we offer.
The Buoy Forecast graphics are still not working. We are working to remedy that situation. And NOAA no longer is supplying bulletin files on their old site. We will pick up the slack. More details to follow
It's the end of an era and the beginning of a new one.
UPDATE 3/30/2021 at 10:22 AM
NOAA reports: There is a major network issue at our College Park data center. This is causing the FTP connectivity drops. Unfortunately, this same issue has also taken down the listserv that we use to send out updates. Therefore we haven't been able to send regular emails like we usually do during times of crisis. Multiple teams are working to get service restored, but we don't have an ETA at this time. Data will remain available on NOMADS, as that service runs out of our other data center.
1:45 PM Data Center Issue Resolved. All services up and operational
