He's a swell type of guy
By Stephen Dorman sdorman@theacorn.com

FEARLESS FORECASTER-Nathan Cool discusses his method for tracking storms in the South Pacific.

Newbury Park

resident is the chief forecaster for WetSand.com

Living polymath or laid-back surfer, Nathan Cool could probably be described as both.

The 43-year-old Newbury Park resident is an author, a computer software engineer, a certified fitness trainer and the chief forecaster for WetSand.com, a highly-respected surfing website.

Several times per week, Cool posts swell updates and longrange surfing and weather synopsis on WetSand.com. His reports typically focus on California, the East Coast and Central America.

Working from a computer in his home, Cool studies wave analysis models-many of which are provided by the National Oceanic & Atmosphere Administration (NOAA)-and tracks developing storms from around the globe.

The information Cool gathers is used to help calculate upcoming beach and weather conditions.

"I track storms around the Pacific and the Atlantic, mostly, and especially for California," Cool said. "I'm looking at the northern and southern hemispheres and I can gauge at what time the swells will arrive and how big they'll be based on the angle they come in at."

The NOAA models can project swells well before the waves actually reach the shore. When forecasting wave heights, Cool often releases his first projections two weeks in advance of the waves' arrival.

As the swell develops and travels closer to shore, Cool said his forecasting accuracy can be as high as 95 percent correct.

"If I'm working off a zero hour model, something that says this is what's happening right now, the accuracy is pretty darn close," he said.

The direction the beach faces and the bathymetry or topography of the ocean floor also plays an important role in how big the waves will be, Cool said.

For example, Tuesday's large southern swell had south-facing surf breaks in Malibu hitting 5 to 7 feet on the sets, while some north-facing beaches in Ventura were considerably smaller.

"That was one of the largest storms I've seen in a really long time," Cool said.

"The problem was the storm was located below Easter Island," he said. "If you were at the right spot, you could've seen sets that were double overhead. But if you weren't, you're not going to see much of it."

Cool has been forecasting surf conditions for more than a decade.

In 1995, at the onset of the Internet revolution, Cool started the website SurfingTheVenturaCoast.com.

"The Internet was just so new at the time," he said. "It was a really crappy little site."

Cool would occasionally post local swell updates on the original website, and once he began to receive reader feedback saying they'd pay to have the information ahead of time, that's when the light bulb went off inside his head.

"I thought, 'Why don't you start something?'" he said.

"In '96, I started building WaveCast as a consulting thing I could have on the side," Cool said. "I built a professional website that required password access that people could buy online using a credit card 24 hours a day."

Cool launched WaveCast.com in 1997, going head-to-head against larger forecasters such as Surfline.com.

By 1999, WaveCast merged with Ventura-based WetSand.com.

Cool said he's received a variety of both positive and negative feedback over his years of forecasting.

Surfers, lifeguards and homeowners tracking hurricanes are some of the folks that find Cool's data to be an invaluable source of information.

There are, on the other hand, those who blame Internet forecasting and surf camera providers for the exploding popularity of the sport.

"It's not necessarily the Internet that's ruined surfing for some people," Cool said. "It's the marketing. More people are doing it now than ever before. It's easier to learn and there are a lot of people out there teaching it . . .

"Let's say there wasn't any Internet forecasting at all," he said. "Would there still be that many people in the water? Probably."

Cool recently released his long range seasonal forecasts for the west and east coasts. Out east, Cool's anticipating another strong

hurricane season. He said the overall outlook in the west this summer will be better than last year but still "pretty moderate" as far as the waves are concerned.

"Southern California probably, with a very high likelihood this July and more so August and September, will definitely get some hurricane swells, where last year we didn't," he said. "It's almost inevitable this year we will. It's already starting to hold true."

When he's not surfing or studying forecasting models, Cool works at Animated Designs in Westlake as a part-time computer software engineer.

He's also written four books with a fifth on global warming due to be released later this year. Cool's books range in topic from poetry to computer design to surf forecasting. To purchase his books, visit Cool's website at www.NathanCool.com.