COMPARISON OF HINDGAST AMD OBSERVED WAVES ALONG TEffi 

 NORTHiaiN HEW JERSEY COAST FOR THE STOfM OF NOVEMBER 6-7, 19^3 



by 



Kenneth Kaplan and Thorndike Saville, Jr. 

 Research Division, Beach Erosion Board 



On Noventoer 6 and 7, 1953 a severe Atlantic Coast stonn caused 

 extensive damage to beaches and structures in the Long Is land -Northern 

 New Jersey coastal area. The most intense part of the storm (Figure 1) 

 coincided with the occurrence of high tides and produced record or 

 near record high water marks in the area. In wind intensity the storm 

 compared with many of the most violent that preceded itj the wind 

 waves accompanying it were, therefore, among the highest observed 

 along this coastal segment. 



During the period March 22 through April 9, 195/k, the Beach Erosion 

 Board conducted the third in a series of classes dealing with wave, 

 beach erosion, and shore protection phenomena. One topic to which 

 almo st a week of class instruction and practice time was devoted was 

 wind wave forecasting and hindcasting. After instruction in and 

 demonstration of forecasting methods, the class, divided into several 

 teams, performed a supervised series of wave hindcasts climaxing in a 

 hindcast for the Northern New Jersey shore of waves from the storm of 

 November 1953, As a control the class instructors (the authors) also 

 performed a wave hindcast for this storm. All forecasting teams 

 operated independently using the Sverdrup-¥unk nsthods of forecasting 

 and decay analysis as revised by Bretschneider (l,2)-»-, a.s a further 

 item of interest, the authors performed an additional hindcast analysis 

 of the storm utilizing the method recently devised by ¥. J, Pierson and 

 G, Neumann of New York University (3>4.), a. conparison has also been 

 made with reported visual observations, 



Hindcast summaries of wave data by three class teams and the 

 instructors, all derived by the Sverdrup-Munk-Bretschneider approach 

 and by the authors using the Pier son-Neumann method are shown graph- 

 ically on Figure 2, 



Table 1 includes sunmaries of both the forecasting parameters 

 derived by the instructors from the six-hourly U. S. Weather Bureau 

 North American Surface charts, and the hindcast wave parameters, 

 obtained first by use of the Bretschneider forecasting and decay 

 curves, then by the Pierson-Neumahn technique. The forecasting 

 parameters (i.e. wind velocity, fetch, and initial duration) utilized 

 are the same for both methods. 



* Numbers "in parentheses refer to the Bibliography at the end of 

 the report. 



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