Chilly ocean temperatures at the Shore may continue into next week

Surf temperatures at the Jersey Shore should be approaching their annual peak about now, but on Saturday morning they were more appropriate to October than the hottest period of the year.

The surf temperature off Atlantic City was down to 59.5 shortly before 11 a.m. on the official government gauge, and surf temperatures could remain below the normal, 70, well into next week, said Michael Crowley, with the Rutgers University Center for Ocean Observing Leadership.

Said Cameron Wunderlin, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service Office in Mount Holly, “We’ve just been seeing really strong upwelling,” referring to what happens when the warmer surface layers are replaced by the colder waters below.

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This one got underway last week when the water temperatures off Atlantic City dropped from 77.7 degrees late on July 19 — the last time the waters were above 70 — to 64.6 degrees in a 12-hour period, then plummeted to 56.5 last Friday.

Temperatures rebounded somewhat during the weekend afternoons but for much of the time since Monday they had been hovering just above 60 degrees, according to the government’s sensor.

“This is a long cold one,” said Crowley. “This is one we’ll remember for a bit.”

“This is as long as I can remember temperatures like this,” said Jim Eberwine, longtime weather service marine specialist who now is the emergency management coordinator for Absecon.

» READ MORE: The heat wave is generating cold waves at the Jersey Shore as ocean temperatures take a plunge

The upwelling event was set off by the same winds from the South that baked the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast in the most intense heat wave of the season, which finally broke on Tuesday. Philadelphia set two temperature records, and so far at least five heat-related deaths have been reported.

Those steady winds, working in tandem with the spin of the Earth, chased the top warm layers farther offshore, making the cold water below an unwelcome summer replacement, said Crowley.

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Upwelling events are common, pointed out Andrew Allegra, with the National Centers for Environmental Information. “We see this every summer at the Atlantic City location,” he said. And the chill isn’t record-level: Eberwine said surf temperatures dropped to 49 degrees during the blistering summer of 1988.

But this one has been particularly vigorous and persistent, Eberwine added.

After that break Tuesday as the winds took a northerly turn, the heat has made a modest comeback, and winds have been blowing from a more southerly direction again.

Eberwine noted that surf temperatures also were below normal off the coasts of Long Island and North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

The winds were due to reverse direction again by Saturday with the passage of a front, but don’t expect the waters to respond immediately, said the weather service’s Wunderlin. Even with Tuesday’s cooldown and wind shift, the surf remained chilly.

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Water responds more ponderously to changes than does the air, said Wunderlin, so it is possible the surf will remain on the cool side for at least the next few days.

Said Crowley, “There’s a whole lot of water moving.”

He said that while the forecast does call for breaks in the southerly winds during the next few days, they will be making comebacks.

This is of some personal concern, he said, since he’s planning a recreational excursion to Wildwood in August.

“I want this to end,” he said.