1 Introduction 



Background 



The U.S. Army Engineer Waterways Experiment Station (WES), Coastal Engineering Research 

 Centw's (CERC's) Field Research Facility ^RF), located on 0.7 km^ at Duck, NC (Figure 1), con- 

 sists of a 561-m-long research pier and accompanying office and field support buUdings. The FRF is 

 located near the middle of Currituck Spit along a 100-km unbroken stretch of shoreline extending 

 south of Rudee Inl^, VA, to Oregon Inlet, NC. The FRF is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the 

 east and Currituck Sound to the west. The facility is designed to (a) provide a rigid platform from 

 which waves, currents, water levels, and bottom elevations can be measured, especially during severe 

 storms; (b) provide CERC with field experience and data to complement laboratory and analytical 

 studies aiid numerical models; (c) provide a manned field facility for testing new instrumentation; and 

 (d) serve as a permanent field bas5 of operations for physical and biological studies of the site and 

 adjacent region. 



The research pier is a reinforced concrete structure supported on 0.9-m-diam steel piles spaced 

 12.2 m apart along the pier's length and 4.6 m apart across the width. The piles are embedded ap- 

 proximately 20 m below the ocean bottom. The pier deck is 6. 1 m wide and extends from behind the 

 duneline to about the 6-m water depth contour at a height of 7.8 m above the National Geodetic Ver- 

 tical Datum (NGVD). The pilings are protected against sand abrasion by concrete erosion collars and 

 against corrosion by a cathodic system. 



An FRF Measurements and Analysis Program has been established to collect basic oceanographic 

 and meteorological data at the site, reduce and analyze these data, and publish the results. 



This r^wrt, which summarizes data for 1992, continues a series of reports begun in 1977. 



Organization of Report 



This report is organized into nine Chapters and five appendixes. Chapter 1 is an introduction; 

 Chapters 2 through 8 discuss the various data collected during the year; and Chapter 9 describes the 

 storms that occurred. Appendix A presents the bathymetric surveys, Appendix B summarizes 

 deepwater wave statistics, and Appendixes C through E (published under separate cover as Volume 11) 

 contain summary statistics for other gages. 



In each Chapter of this report, the respective instruments used for monitoring the meteorological 

 or oceanographic conditions are briefly described, along with data collection and analysis procedures 



