Summer of 2018 Dancing Between Clouds

The summer of 2018 has been a study of contrasts. For most of the early summer until July 12, there was very little rain. From July 13 onwards, it was easy to get caught in a shower or have multiple soakings but it was also quite possible to have an almost perfect week at the beach.  It just depended on where you happened to be.  We went to visit friends on the South Carolina coast for a couple of days and stayed very wet.

Along the coast in the summertime, it is not unusual for showers to form along the boundary between the coastal Seabreeze and the inland air mass. Often that means areas right on the beach are drier than areas inland. Who gets wet does depend on where the moisture is coming from and how it moves around.  In general, it has been a wet year in North Carolina and coastal South Carolina with lots of Gulf moisture impacting even the mountains and the Piedmont region of North Carolina.

However, during the first two weeks of August, we had two friends staying in Emerald Isle and while they saw a couple of showers, our location just three miles inland had showers almost ever day during their two weeks here.  For some historical perspective on this summer's weather, read my August post, Elusive Good Weather, about the summer and fall of 2015 when things were really wet here on the coast.

For a few weeks in mid-summer, the beaches were plagued with dangerous rip currents but that situation cleared by late July and with our weather pattern changing, it looks like we might be setting up for a nice fall season at the beach.

My WordPress blog has some possibly insurmountable technical difficulties so my new content can be found at this location.  My website homepage has more links and has been updated to improve its speed by using Amazon technology.

Our guide for Emerald Isle, A Week at the Beach - The Emerald Isle Travel Guide, was updated and released in June 2018.  There is also a less expensive black and white paperback and a very inexpensive Kindle version which will work on almost any electronic platform.

A good place to look at all our books is my Amazon author page.  If you need to contact me, you may use this form.  There is a link on this page to sign up for the Crystal Coast newsletter which we send out a few times a year.