This may be the reason-
Shivering in the Surf
Atlantic's Sudden Temperature Dive A Midsummer Mystery for Scientists
By John F. Kelly
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 7, 2003; Page A01
David Quillin, a surfer from Maryland's Eastern Shore, knows what cold seawater feels like: It makes exposed flesh feel like it's burning, sets hands and feet to tingling, numbs the body and, after repeated dunkings, produces a painful "ice cream" headache.
The 38-year-old architect expects all of this when he surfs the frigid waters off Ocean City in January. He didn't expect it in the middle of summer. But it's just what Quillin encountered when he paddled his board into the surf two weeks ago.
"I've never experienced it in my whole life," he recounted, "where the water right along shore could be that radically cold."
Quillin isn't alone in his observation. Surfers, lifeguards, anglers and others who regularly dip a toe into the Atlantic have noticed this summer that water that is typically bathwater-warm has occasionally become fjord-cold.
"During [most of] July, our water temperatures were, I would say, right around normal," said Capt. Butch Arbin, head of the Ocean City Beach Patrol. That's in the low 70s. About two weeks ago, he said, "there was a tremendous change in temperature, [dropping] as much as 10 degrees overnight."
It was so cold Monday, Arbin said, that his guards pulled from the surf a teenage girl who was shaking uncontrollably and near hypothermia. (She thawed out in an ambulance.)
The unseasonable chill started easing this week, but beachgoers from as far afield as Virginia Beach, Nags Head, N.C., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Daytona Beach, Fla., have been curious about the precipitous drop. So many people have contacted the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that William Tseng, an oceanographer at NOAA's Silver Spring headquarters, is investigating the phenomenon.
He's examining three possible causes: increased river runoff from this spring's frequent rains; a current of cold seawater snaking down from the North Atlantic; and an event known as "coastal upwelling."
While Tseng and other researchers caution that it's only a guess -- they want to pore over data gleaned from satellites, buoys and other sources -- the prime suspect appears to be coastal upwelling. The driving force behind upwelling is persistent winds that blow up the coast from the south or southwest. The winds push away the warm surface layer of water, which is then carried eastward as the Earth spins, a process known as the Coriolis force.
"We're on a rotating planet, so there's a tendency for things to veer to the right when they start moving," said Robert J. Chant of Rutgers University's Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences. "Water goes to the right of the wind. So in the case of coastal oceans, water goes to the right and has to be replaced."
Unfortunately for thousands of bikini-wearing and boogie-boarding vacationers, what it's replaced by is colder water from the bottom of the ocean. The icy liquid comes burbling up from the depths as if on a conveyor belt.
It's a fairly typical midsummer phenomenon, as southerly winds bring hot, humid air up from the Gulf of Mexico. It may have been made more pronounced this year by the severe winter that gripped the Eastern Seaboard. The memory of that frigid season lives on in the vast ocean, which warms up much more slowly than does land.
Ocean City's Arbin is convinced that upwelling is to blame for the cold water that stung his feet last week. In the weekly bulletin he distributes to his 200 employees, he included an explanation of upwelling and a diagram of the process at work.
"People were walking up and asking" why the water was cold, he said. This way, "it's not just a dumb lifeguard going, 'I dunno. It's cold.' "
Courageous tourists -- kids especially -- are braving the chilly surf. Others prefer to sunbathe or build castles on the sun-kissed sand.
"It's keeping a lot of them out of the water, that's for sure," said Kelly Marshall, on the phone from the front desk of Ocean City's Santa Maria Hotel on the Boardwalk.
Don Hutson, captain of ocean rescue in Nags Head, said he's never seen water this cold for this long. "They're showing 60 degrees at the Duck research pier," Hutson, 36, said of the Outer Banks town. "If it's 60, it's the low end of that 60."
Legs have been tingling in Rehoboth Beach, Del., too. The water temperature was in the low 70s about two weeks ago, said Lt. Thad Zimmer, 27, of the beach patrol. "Then the wind changed and blew out all the warm water, causing cold water to take its place," he said.
Ron Kuhlman of the Virginia Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau said his office hasn't received any complaints. But Lt. Carl Throckmorton of the Virginia Beach Lifesaving Service said he's noticed it.
"It's nothing that's keeping people out of the water," said Throckmorton, 29. "I assume the tourists here don't even realize it. Those of us who are out in it consistently are noticing a drop in the temperature."
So are anglers, who monitor water temperature with the obsessive devotion of day traders studying stock prices.
"I've noticed some local charter captains saying tuna fishing hasn't been as good this year," said Jim Motsko, president of the White Marlin Open Fishing Tournament in Ocean City. "The season seems to be very late coming on. . . . It seems that whole fishing season is three weeks late."
On the other hand, said Dale Timmons, publisher of the Coastal Fisherman newspaper, the cold water lured chill-loving striped bass close to shore. "We had two to three weeks of great rockfish, which we don't normally get till fall," he said. (For his part, Timmons thinks the cold snap is the result of a recalcitrant Gulf Stream denying the mid-Atlantic eddies of warm water.)
Surfing architect David Quillin spent years in California riding his board and enduring that coast's cold water. After venturing into the surf last week in just swim trunks, he was back the next day in a torso-covering "spring suit."
"I just refused to believe I would have to wear a full suit at the end of July," Quillin said. "And I still froze. Then I thought: I don't care what I look like. I'm wearing a full suit."
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