Forecast Waves is a marine forecast site organised the way the water actually is: by ocean basin and sub-basin, with the Great Lakes carrying their own section rather than a corner of the Atlantic one. It draws sea-state forecasts — significant wave height, period and direction — from five global models (ECMWF Wave, AIFS Waves, NOAA's GFS-Wave and Environment Canada's GDWPS) and, for the Great Lakes, ECCC's regional RDWPS.

It is part of a small network. Forecast Eagle covers North America from NOAA sources, Forecast Euro draws the ECMWF model worldwide, and Forecast Canada covers Canada from MSC. Those sites are organised by place or by model; this one is organised by basin, because that's the axis a wave forecast actually lives on.

Live: the ocean explorer — seventy-three places (the World Ocean, seven basins, twenty seas and forty-five coastal approaches), five global models, and up to sixteen fields depending on what the model publishes — and the Great Lakes explorer, all five lakes, from Environment Canada's RDWPS at about one kilometre.

Both run the same instrument as the rest of the network: the buffered timeline, the pointer that reads a value back out of the drawn pixel, the 1,129-table colour-table switcher, the place-label and boundary engine, the globe projection, the six export aspect ratios and PNG/MP4/GIF output. What is this site's own is the model switch, the swell-and-wind streamline overlay, and a place hierarchy made of water rather than countries.

Check Models for the per-model status and cadence.

ECMWF Wave — the coupled ocean-wave component of ECMWF's HRES, the same centre Forecast Euro already draws for the atmosphere. AIFS Waves — ECMWF's machine-learning forecast, carried the same way: same colours, same instrument, so it is comparable to the physical model rather than just plausible on its own.

GFS-Wave (WAVEWATCH III) — NOAA/NCEP's global wave model. GDWPS — Environment Canada's global wave model, a fourth independent forecast of the same sea state.

RDWPS — Environment Canada's regional model, run separately for each Great Lake on its own bathymetry. The Great Lakes get their own model because a freshwater basin builds a steeper, shorter-period sea than the open ocean does, and a global model tuned for the ocean gets that wrong.

Not an official source, and not affiliated with ECMWF, NOAA or Environment Canada. Data belongs to those centres; the rendering, the wording and any judgement expressed here are this site's own and should not be read as theirs.

Not a source of marine warnings. For small-craft advisories, gale and storm warnings, and official guidance, use the National Weather Service Marine Forecasts, the Great Lakes forecast offices, or your national maritime safety authority. A model chart is not a warning, however good the model.