NOR'IDA MEANS BUSINESS Coastal Low Pressure, Anonymous Nor’easter, And Remnants Of Tropical
Storm Ida Combine
Forces To Deliver Solid Shot Of Autumn Swell By Nick McGregor
Yesterday we gave you a
sample from Nor’Ida’s bountiful buffet; today we dig deeper into the origins of
this late-Hurricane Season run of waves. Some people are calling it straight-up
Ida, but after briefly reaching hurricane strength on November 8th, Tropical Storm Ida hit the
Florida Panhandle on November 9th, before her remains were
steered back into the Atlantic by a blocking high-pressure system. Others claim
the swell came from another low pressure/nor’easter hybrid etching its
anonymous name in the overflowing November record books. We turned to Florida
Zippo sales rep/ part-time meteorologist and oceanographer/ full-time ripper
James Jolly for some insight:
“This time of year, we start to see these
fronts push through the South Florida area and then linger down towards Cuba.
When we have a major high pressure follow behind a front and stall out in the Western
Atlantic like we saw a couple weeks ago, the pattern can set up and get
interesting. Regardless of whether or not it’s a full tropical system, we can
see lots of tropical energy fed into the same area, and resulting low pressure
development. With high pressure blocking up the Western Atlantic, nothing is
allowed to interfere with this energy, so it tends to fester and intensify. This
is where Ida got the juice to form. In addition, following the front that
stalled, we had low pressure off the Mid-Atlantic coast that gave us northeast
swell at the end of October before sagging southeast and retrograding back
towards Puerto Rico and setting up more east swell. While the blocking high
pressure closer to Florida wrecked the conditions (see stiff onshores the week
of November 2nd-9th), this old gale north of Puerto Rico tracked northwest. I
had anticipated that the blocking high pressure would move east, when it
actually moved north. That allowed the tropo Ida/hybrid system to come up more
to the west and around the ridge into the Gulf, while the blocking high
kept Ida’s remains from racing off northeast; instead it just pushed east and
joined forces with that gale tracking northwest from Puerto Rico. So we started
out with a five to six-foot east swell around 13-14 seconds, before the
interaction of the old gale, the remains of Ida, and the blocking high all combined
to give us a solid run of northwest winds, which got the refracto machine going
for South Florida. Once the pattern evolved, we saw a giant gale form off the Mid-Atlantic
coast with seas pushing 30 feet. While the Outer Banks were getting spanked, we
saw heaps of northeast swell in areas south, anywhere from six to eight-foot at
a respectable 15-17 seconds.”
So there you have it: a
scientific explanation for the unadulterated joy we’ve enjoyed pretty much
nonstop over the last week. Whatever you want to call it, Nor’Ida will certainly
go down as a swell to remember.
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