High swell warnings in the Caribbean Islands during March 2008

Long and high swells are dangerous for many islands located in the Tropics because they can generate large breakers and long run up associated with large set up when reaching the coast. Most of the time those islands do not experience large waves especially in usually protected areas, for instance, by coral reefs or wind protected. Long waves have the ability to reach such areas, thanks to wave set up, shoaling and bottom refraction. This article describes an example of such high swell events and its impact on the islands. The buoy network used by the French National Weather Service and all available satellite observations related to waves are presented together with numerical sea-state models used to issue early warnings.