NDBC station · buoy
Buoy 46022: Eel River
17NM WSW of Eureka, CA. 40.716°N 124.540°W · Waters from Pt. St. George to Cape Mendocino CA from 10 to 60 nm
Station 46022 · reported 25 min ago
NO-GO
NO-GO for a typical 25 to 35 ft center console: wind 19 kt gusting 26, the gusts past the NO-GO line (22 kt).
Measured Now
Reported 25 min ago · National Data Buoy Center, station 46022
Marine Alerts for Waters from Pt. St. George to Cape Mendocino CA from 10 to 60 nm
times PDTWaters from Pt. St. George to Cape Mendocino CA from 10 to 60 nm
- Small Craft Advisoryuntil 6 am todayCAUTION
- Gale Warningfrom 6 am today until 9 am ThursdayNO-GO
Scored for Your Boat
Fifteen knots and three feet is a pleasant afternoon on one hull and a beating on another. Your briefing scores 46022 and the conditions around it against your boat and the limits you set, with the hour it changes.
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How to Read Station 46022
This is a floating buoy, so its seas are measured rather than modeled. Significant wave height is the average of the highest third of the waves, which means roughly one wave in ten is noticeably bigger than the number, and the largest in an hour can be close to twice it.
How the status is read. The station’s wind and seas are held against the lines of a typical 25 to 35 ft center console (CAUTION above 15 kt or 3 ft seas, NO-GO above 22 kt or 5 ft seas). When it reports only one of the two, the status names what it measured. Marine warnings and advisories on this water count exactly as they do in your briefing.
Period matters as much as height. The period printed is the dominant one, the period of the waves carrying the most energy. On its own, four feet at ten seconds is a long swell and four feet at four seconds is a short steep chop that stops a boat. But a long period does not make a sea gentle: a distant swell can carry the headline period while the local wind raises a steep sea on top of it, which is why the wind sea and the swell are listed apart when their periods differ or the wind sea is big enough to be a sea of its own. Wind against tide steepens everything, and a buoy cannot see that from where it floats. Age matters too: stations go quiet, and a reading that has not updated in three hours is history rather than weather.
This station sits in the Weather Service marine zone Waters from Pt. St. George to Cape Mendocino CA from 10 to 60 nm (PZZ470), which is the forecast we read alongside it.
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