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PRE-SUMMER PULSE
East Coast sees great surf before the doldrums of summer kick in
Early summer is a tough time to be on the East Coast. Good thing Mother Nature set us off into the season of flat spells, sweltering heat and jumbo mosquitoes with some late-spring shacks. Breaks along the East Coast experienced a round of fun surf last week from a system that developed off the Mid-Atlantic coastline. Here's how it happened:
Early last week, a large frontal system exited out of the Southwestern US and pulled into the Ohio River Valley. As the initial low weaken, low pressure took shape off the Mid-Atlantic coastline on Wednesday and lingered several hundred miles offshore on Thursday. As this low took shape, a fetch of SE/ESE winds developed along eastern side of the system - this resulted in a fun shot of swell on Thursday for breaks from southern New England through Long Island that could handle the gusty NE winds.
By Friday, the NE/E winds along the northern side of low pressure put a healthy pulse of swell in the water for spots from Jersey southward through Deleware and Maryland and even Virginia Beach, with better conditions as high pressure built down from Canada over the region. Spots along the Outer Banks remained basically out of control, though conditions did improve some for certain spots during the afternoon/evening as winds relaxed.
Locals and a large influx of out-of-towners awoke on Saturday to find offshore winds and plenty of leftover ENE swell for the Outer Banks, with spots from Kitty Hawk through Buxton reaping the benefits. The swell did fade through the day and winds (for some spots) turned sideshore by the afternoon but it was a still fun day -- especially considering the sunny, 70 degree weather.
With our low pressure system drifting eastward and weakening, we still saw strong enough winds along the western side of the storm to send a healthy shot of swell to breaks in Florida but local winds proved to be a problem for the majority of spots.
Overall, this storm produced a fun shot of swell for many breaks in the Mid-Atlantic region and hopefully we'll have more to come before the summer flat spells hit.
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April 20, 2009
