This Ocean City-based pro surfs every day in winter — and doesn’t even wear a wet suit

As a massive snowstorm bore down on the South Jersey coast the last weekend of January, most took to shelter, battening down the hatches and shoring up supplies as the wind whipped fiercely and more than a foot of snow fell.

But Rob Kelly prepared differently. As the bomb cyclone turned the bobbing waves along the shore of Ocean City into roaring navy dunes, he plodded across the snow-covered beach.

Then, Kelly set up his camera, undressed to just his board shorts and his salt-bleached auburn curls, and sprinted toward the ocean.

“I said I was going to do it. Rain or shine. Snow or blizzard. So — a little reluctantly — but here we go,” he said, before taking off.

While some may think — and have told him to his face — that he’s crazy, Kelly is just sticking to a New Year’s resolution. The pro surfer has pledged to either surf or take an ice bath in the ocean every day, regardless of how cold it is outside. Kelly plans on doing the daily dips until the water warms. He expects he’ll do it until at least sometime in April.

The Ocean City-based Kelly, who has been a professional surfer for 15 years, posts each of his videos to Instagram, where he’s seen his follower base grow since his ice baths began. He decided on the challenge after taking part in an annual polar bear plunge, a tradition where people dive into frigid water on the first day of the new year. It’s a sort of aquatic cleanse and reset.

“I [polar-plunge] every year,” said Kelly, 32. “And every year after doing it I say, ‘Man, that feels so good.’ You feel so energized by it.”

“That was the inspiration and I just added my own twist by catching a wave in the ocean, which is the biggest ice bath right here in my backyard,” he added.

The challenge is — pun partly intended — fluid, as far as what Kelly does when he gets in the water. If there are good waves for surfing, he’ll surf for a bit in his board shorts. If conditions for surfing aren’t great, he’ll take a quick ice bath, usually in the morning to wake himself up.

Kelly fell in love with surfing during the summers down the Shore. Every summer and on weekends, he and his brother would go to his family’s Ocean City house and do nothing but surf, surf, surf.

Year after year, Kelly would tear through the waves along New Jersey’s coast, a surfing scene that he says has only grown in reputation. He earned sponsorships and won competitions.

“One summer before my freshman year of high school my parents let us stay there and it was kind of like the summer vacation never ended,” said Kelly, who went to Ocean City High School. “After high school, I never really looked back. I’ve been traveling, surfing, and working with brands ever since.”

Surfing has taken Kelly all over the world, chasing the best waves. But it’s New Jersey’s scene that catalyzed his love for surfing and where a vibrant local surfing scene taught him most of what he knows, he said. It was also where he learned to surf in the winter, tagging along with veterans who knew that rough weather meant excellent waves.

“Just being from New Jersey growing up here, I naturally surfed in the wintertime,” he said. “That’s what you have to do if you want to get waves in New Jersey. Actually the winter time is when we get the best waves here in New Jersey.”

“The rule of thumb is the bigger the storm, the bigger the waves,” he said.

The first day he did his ice plunge gave him a false sense of confidence, said Kelly, with the temperatures outside just shy of 60 degrees. After the first day, Kelly thought the challenge would be no problem. That was, of course, before two storms and several days of single-digit windchills.

With each day, Kelly says that he’s gotten more acclimated to the cold of the ocean water -- about 40 degrees now -- and that it brings numerous health benefits. Cold-water therapy is said to improve circulation, reduce inflammation, and even improve sleep quality.

Since starting his challenge, Kelly’s encounters with onlookers have occasionally been a story in contrasts. One time, as he walked toward the water in his board shorts, a man zipped up in his coat, hurriedly walking his dog in the blustery cold, stared at Kelly, and just shook his head.

“Must be nice to be young,” the man said as he walked away, Kelly said.

Mostly, though, the response to his challenge has been extremely positive. With each video he posts on social media, Kelly’s following on Instagram grows and he’s received a torrent of messages from people saying his frosty routine has inspired them. His challenge has even drawn support from local businesses, including Surf Taco, a New Jersey-based seafood restaurant, which has pledged $100 to a charity of Kelly’s choice for every day he sticks to it.

“I started it just as a personal challenge to push myself, but it definitely took on a life of its own on social media,” he said. “Hearing people have been inspired to challenge themselves in other ways too has motivated me even more to keep going. Before the blizzard I got a ton of messages and comments saying stuff like ‘I can’t wait to see your video tomorrow!’ So again that was a little extra motivation knowing people were anticipating seeing the videos of me doing it.”

Kelly doesn’t post a video every time he goes out — just when there’s something eye-catching, like big waves or, in last month’s case, a blizzard.

Kelly sees the challenge as something very simple. If he can will himself to plunge face first into freezing cold water, he can take on whatever the day has in store for him, no problem.

“If I jump in the cold ocean and catch a wave, those stacks of emails that I was dreading or going to the gym and working out or anything that seems challenging, doesn’t really seem that challenging after doing something like that,” Kelly said.