WFO SAN JUAN MARINE ZONE CHANGE

Effective October 1 2008 at 1430 Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) or 1030 AM AST, the National Weather Service in San Juan Puerto Rico will reconfigure its current Coastal Waters Forecast Zones for Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands. This reconfiguration will increase the number of zone groups from five to 10, which will result in smaller zone groups, and provide better forecast services by realigning the coastal zones for climatological, geographical, and bathymetrical effects.

Six new near shore zones have been created to better account for diurnal and nocturnal wind fluctuations found in the tropics as well as shallow water wave processes that contribute to differing sea states. The remaining zones have been either reduced or expanded to better account for the Atlantic passages into the Caribbean.

Zone AMZ720 has been replaced by two new near shore zones...AMZ712 and AMZ715. Zone AMZ750 has been replaced with two new near shore zones...AMZ742 and AMZ745. Additionally...Zone AMZ740 has been reduced to cover only the Mona Passage southward. Zone AMZ730 covers the majority of the Caribbean off shore waters except for waters affected by the Anegada Passage southward...which will now be covered by zone AMZ722. A description of the new zone boundaries is proviced in Table 1. See Figure 1 and Figure 2 below for a visual format of the original and new zone boundaries, respectively.

Because of these improvements, customers must take appropriate action to receive all products that use the Universal Geographic Coordinate (UGC) designator (Z). See Table 2 for products affected by this change.

Figure 1

Figure 1. Original WFO San Juan Coastal Water Forecast Zones

Figure 2

Figure 2: New WFO San Juan Coastal Water Forecast Zones

If you have any questions or comments about this reconfiguration of the Coastal Waters Forecast Zones, contact: