Savannah River Entrance Waves: GTSAV Wave Buoy

07 and is presently offline. No redeployment planned until new funds become available. Archived data can be accessed here

Grays Reef wave buoy (NDBC Station 41008) is the nearest active source of wave data for Savannah area. See www.ndbc.noaa.gov/station_page.php?station=41008).

Parameter	SI Units	US Units
Hs, Sig. Wave Ht (m, ft)	0.0	0.0 (0.0)
Havg, Avg Wave Ht (m, ft)	0.0	0.0
Hmax, Max Wave Ht (m, ft)	0.0	0.0
Ts, Sig. Wave Period (s)	0.0
Tp, Peak Period (s)	0.0
Mean Wave Direction (deg from, True North)	0.0
Water Temp (deg C, F)	0.0	0.0 (0.0)
Air Temp (deg C, F)	N/A	(0.0)
Wind Dir (deg from)	(0.0)
Wind Speed (m/s, kt)	N/A	(0.0)
Wind Gust (m/s, kt)	N/A	(0.0)

Latest Position Fix: 0 0

This page describes surface water wave data being collected offshore of Savannah, Georgia. Funding has been provided for this effort to Georgia Tech – Savannah (www.gtsav.gatech.edu) from the U.S. Office of Naval Research (http://www.onr.navy.mil/default.asp), through a subcontract from the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography (www.skio.usg.edu), through the SEACOOS project (www.seacoos.org). Data collection began in July, 2004.

How well does it work? See this report for a comparison of Triaxys wave buoy and RD Instruments ADCP-derived wave parameters: GTSavbuoyadcp05.pdf. You'll need some flavor of Adobe Acrobat to read it.

Deployment site: 31 deg 55.211 min N, 80 deg 44.281 min W
Water depth approx. 12 m (38 ft) MLLW

Plots (Updated Hourly):

Wave Ht/Period: past 24 hrs, 4 days, 30 days

Wave Direction: past 24 hrs, 4 days, 30 days

Buoy Status/Water Temp: past 24 hrs, 4 days, 30 days

Buoy Positions: past 24 hrs, 4 days, 30 days

1-D Spectra: past 24 hrs, 4 days, 30 days, Latest

Directional Spectra: past 12 hrs (7Mb), 24 hrs (14Mb), 3 days (50Mb), Latest (jpeg)

Directional spectra are movies are in AVI format; can play in Windows Media Player. 1 sec in movie = 1 hr in real time. The spectra allow you to see the frequency content of the waves - whether you have mostly swell (low-frequency energy) or wind chop (high frequency energy).

Data Explanation page describes how data are collected, gives definitions, and provides archived buoy data.

Sample Plots with some description to help aid interpretation may be found here.

Some model results obtained with the SWAN wave transformation model, showing how waves vary throughout Tybee Roads, may be found here

Contact Us here.

Paul A. Work, Ph.D., P.E., Assoc. Prof. and Assoc. Chair

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Tech - Savannah

210 Technology Circle, Savannah, GA 31407-3039

paul.work@gtsav.gatech.edu, www.gtsav.gatech.edu

(912) 966-7943 Voice / (912) 966-7836 Fax

Page created August 16, 2004 PAW

Last modified August 2, 2007 PAW