Every time I check on our forecasts over this last month the Outer Banks have been going off. This is not what I’ve been used to seeing these last few years and reminds me of the “good old days” when we used to see day after day after day of strong south and SW flow along the entire eastern sea board. Pattern shift? global warming cycle? I’m sure more research will need to go in, but the short of it is that the Bermuda High is back this summer and the upper level trough doesn’t appear to be going anywhere so this southerly wind is still locked in place as it has been for almost the entire month of June.
Here is the typical daily snapshot that we see of the OBX winds:
What causes this relentless stream of flow? The Bermuda High gets stationed to the east and the southerly flow becomes the prevailing wind direction for weeks at a time. Sea breezes driven by thermals are able to couple up with the flow and certain points along the eastern seaboard really accelerate in this setup. The OBX is one of them:
Anyone can go through and see the archives. Click on a location’s details and scroll down to the Data Archives section. From here you can view by month, week, etc.
Here is an example of the archives for the month of June for Waves, NC. Note that the graph scale has stayed in the 40-60 mph range for the entire month meaning every week there was winds pushing over 20 mph. http://www.windalert.com/spot/395
Is this normal?
Check the stats module: Sampled all Junes for this station 1996-2013: # of days winds got over 25=3, number of days winds got over 20=7, Number of Days winds got over 15=12.
For June of 2013, We saw 24 days with winds over 20 mph in Waves, NC.
Party on OBX!
– Matt Corey