Nathan Cool creates custom marine forecasting and surf predictions, is a self-published author, and has been a guest speaker at Loyola Marymount University and Scripps Institution of Oceanography
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Cool is a meteorologist and forecaster for Surfing Magazine, was the Chief Forecaster for WetSand, Inc., and founder of the forecasting service WaveCast. His affiliations include the American Meteorological Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Weather Association.
Media coverage
Nathan Todd Cool is the author of The WetSand WaveCast Guide to Surf Forecasting, a comprehensive book on surf forecasting. He is also the author of Cherished Memories, Rhythm of the Ocean, and The Four Keys to Successful Design, which received the Editors Choice Award from iUniverse.
Cool is also the author of Is it Hot in Here, a book on climate change, which was adopted as part of the Earth Sciences curriculum at Loyola Marymount University in 2007.
Cool has been featured in various periodicals including the Los Angeles Daily News, the Santa Cruz Sentinel, Ventura County Star, and Conejo Valley's Acorn.
Since the mid-1990s, Cool has been a regular guest on the Surf Talk Radio Network, which has had a listening audience throughout central and southern California and Hilo, Hawaii, providing long-range seasonal forecasts.
WaveCast history
Cool lived in the Midwest before moving to California in the mid-1980s. Once in California, he picked up surfing and decided to fill the void of information that could accurately and affordably predict surf conditions to maximize quality time while surfing.
In the late 1990s, Cool founded his initial forecasting service WaveCast. Combining his engineering skills and ocean wave principles, he developed an accurate method for forecasting surfing conditions that is still in use today.
Cool’s approach brought the latest technology on the Internet into the hands of many surfers. Starting as a pay service, WaveCast quickly became a popular forecasting service for Southern California, providing members with inexpensive, accurate forecasts, and received accolades throughout various local media including Marc Kent’s Let’s Talk Surfing.
The pay-per-view model that the original WaveCast service provided was kept information away from many surfers who could not afford the subscription. Cool eventually teamed with WetSand, a new portal for the surfing community. The business model was conducive to providing free forecasts, and the combined expertise brought the availability of demographic expansion while placing crucial information regarding coastal conditions to surfers around the globe.
Forecasting achievements
During the El Niño weather inclemency of 1997 and 1998, when Internet WAM models were still in their infancy, and of questionable reliability after 60 hours, Nathan forewarned that an ominous system could be headed to the California coast, bringing with it surf that could reach over 20 feet in Southern California. The Port Authority at Port San Luis released its boats, paying heed to Nathan's forecast, and was honored to receive an email of thanks from the Port Authority for his accurate predictions and early warning calculations.
In recent times, Cool has given fair warning to areas of Central America for damaging surf from unusually large southern hemisphere storms, in particular, one that formed under Easter Island with 40–50 foot seas that brought 20+ foot (>6.2 m) waves to beaches in Costa Rica, and larger surf around Peru.
Along with these storm forecasts, Cool has also provided seasonal forecasts, including a "State of our Surf" report.
Cool has designed and develop unique automation software that can predict wind and wave height information worldwide. Utilizing various buoy data and raw modeling input parameters, Cool's software has assisted in the creation of various swell models.