Happy / sad to say I have sold my home at Gilgo Beach. Hence the end of live images of the ocean and the weather station on gilgo.com. Will be shutting down cam and weather station the middle of December. I hope the site helped you find some bumps. Shutdown on January 2nd, 2022.
Good Run; 1996 – 2022
Every day a gift, make the best of every session. waves, peter
Update 1/4; updated tide tables so site serves a small purpose! Check the tides and click thru to the buoys… can’t help myself, so used to looking at it for conditions.
Internet came back up, seems lack of power was the problem for the last 2 weeks. In past storms, Cablevision had trucks with generators powering up the cable system. Many beautiful days went by with power and we had no TV or internet as their receive site had no AC. The State Cable Commission states that cable systems have to respond and repair outages within 2 days! Something has changed and it is not for the good.
UPDATE: August 17th
Surf Cam and weather station down as Altice’s Optimum Internet Service at Gilgo Beach is still not working since the storm on August 4th, 2 weeks ago!
Have called Altice a number of time to talk to a machine or a person who has no idea of the geography of the area.
The company offers a terrible response to problems and outages violating many of the rules of the state cable commission concerning service disruptions and responses to customers.
Call the NYS Cable Commission to complain at 800-342-3377. The cable company is required by law to respond to customer complaints within 48 hours!
Finally August 17th around 9 pm, internet was restored! 15 days later. Great service and communications from Altice.
Weather vane arrived on the 12th. I installed it on the 13th so when the internet comes back up, wind readings are accurate again.
Original post; Found that the wind reading from the gilgo.com weather station were coming up low. Many thanks to John from the the NY Kite Center for the heads up. The Wind Anemometer bearings are failing, ordered a replacement unit and will advise when installed. Estimated to receive the shipment by August 12th.
I stopped surfing three years now, due to body parts failing, so do not follow the weather as I used to. Thought wind reading were off as cups were not spinning in light winds last week. After John’s email, can say during tropical storm this week, we showed maximum wind speed of 54 mph and max gust of 60 mph. Most stations on the South Shore of Long Island showed maximum gust over 70 mph with a 78 mph gust at one station.
Walked the beach after the storm, beach looks like it lost 30 to 50 feet, saw the high water marker 30 feet or so away from the base of the dunes so the beaches flooded pretty good. The beach was packed good the morning after but the swell was a disappointment, guess the storm tracked to far inland.
Looks like there will be plenty more chances for waves, check out NOAA Hurricane forecast for the rest of this year.
Facing South August 4th from the top of the path across from the park entrance. All photos below from the same location.Facing South with a little West August 6th.Facing East August 4th.Facing East August 6th. See the high water line.
We have had a fly box at the east end of the Gilgo Marina for years where it helps control the green fly invasions each summer. A surprise this spring has been a young Osprey couple decided to build their nest there.
Ospreys have made a real comeback here on Long Island and guess that nesting areas are getting scarce. The nest was started the 1st week in April with the build going smoothly when a spring storm came up with gusty west winds and blew it away. They started a rebuild right away, but within days, another 30 mph west wind coming thru and shredded it again!
On April 12th, they came back for a third try. A determined couple of birds for sure. Decided to change the Gilgo Bay Cam to an Osprey Nest Cam on the 16th and got it running that day.
An unintended consequence of the Osprey Nest Cam is because the camera is at maximum zoom to get on the nest was not happy with the image quality so looked into software settings. The image quality and size was set up last decade when 20 kb meant something.
Decided to try full image and movie files uploads with no compression. Jpegs uploads went from 20 kb to 300 kb with the image not that much better. So reset sizing so image is bigger. Thought it looked better so reset image settings for the Ocean Surf Cam too. Will see if my ISP complains. So the birds brought a better picture of the waves for the gilgo beach surf cam, you never know.
Hope you enjoy, watch the live Osprey Cam of their nest here
Seems like Swellinfo ongoing forecast issue is lingering. Looked around for alternative, found stormsurf.com.
Graphics are last decade, but the surf forecast and weather information is extensive. Mark Sponsier created the site back in 1998. He packed the site with information on how waves are created, tracked and forecasted.
The 5 day forecast for Gilgo is part of a broader New Jersey to New York forecast, but serves up some good info.
There is also a buoy forecast looking out 5 days that has couple of different reporting screens, here is Buoy 440025, 30 miles south of Islip.
Check out their Tutorial Page for some in depth explanations. Last, one odd situation is that the site is not https, site is still running in the clear.
