The rapid expansion of urbanization along the coastal ocean requires more comprehensive and accurate understanding of coastal ocean dynamics for addressing the interactions between people and the environment. In the past decades, various coastal ocean observation and prediction system adopting cutting-edge technology, such as HF Radar, Gliders, and etc, have been systematically established for this purpose. The creation of coastal ocean observing systems have become essential for ocean forecast modeling by not only providing input data, but also for providing important data for validating the ocean model itself. New York Harbor Observing and Predicting System (NYHOPS) is a comprehensive system for understanding coastal ocean processes in Middle Atlantic Bight. That system now provides medium term (48hr), water level, wave, 3D currents, temperature, and salinity forecasts beginning in the 1990s. Its evolving network of operational coastal ocean and estuary sensors provides real-time observations of weather and ocean conditions throughout the New York/New Jersey (NY/NJ) Harbor Estuary, Hudson River, and NJ coastal waters. To establish confidence in this forecast system and in the HF Radar, a detailed and very comprehensive validation exercise has been conducted. The HF radar surface currents available on an hourly basis covering the entire Middle Atlantic Bight shelf from March 4, 2010 to Oct 22, 2010 have been used for this analysis. Those currents exhibit energy on tidal to seasonal time scales. They typically range from 10 to 70 cm/s. The overall analysis shows that there is a 15 cm/s rms difference in both the EW and NS currents. The bias for the NS current bias is about 1.2 cm/s while the EW current bias is less than 0.05cm/s. The RSR (ratio of the rmse and standard deviation of the observations, a useful overall indicator, is 1.4 for both the EW and NS currents respectively. These metrics and several others looking at the hourly variations will be discussed. The differences that exist will be placed in a perspective useful for other forecast systems.