It is Summer at the Beach!

If there was any doubt that summer is here, it has been erased the weather during the third week of June 2015.  Afternoon temperatures have been in the nineties even along the beaches.

The first afternoon thunderstorms showed up on Wednesday afternoon so it has been nearly perfect beach weather if you can handle the heat.  It has been so hot that I started mowing my yard at 7:30 AM this morning and quit after less than half an hour of mowing.  I will start again tomorrow but I will be out there even earlier.

Of course if you are standing in water like I was a couple weekends ago, the air temperature is not nearly as important.  If you would like to read more about summer at the beach, try a visit to my Coastal Paradise website or if you would like to cut to the chase and learn about my favorite beach, read this article, A Beach That Touches Everyone.

We also publish both a Kindle travel guide for $3.99 and a paperback travel guide for a little over $20 for Emerald Isle and the Crystal Coast.  We also have a free online travel guide to Emerald Isle.

Head on down as soon as you can this unbelievable weather likely will not last.  We will soon be back to afternoon thunderstorms.  This is a great area to visit and an even better place to live.

The Spring Tonic of Blue Waters and Blue Skies

The Crystal Coast is warming quickly.  It is March 10,  2015,  72F before noon and the odds are that we will see fresh local strawberries within the next four to five weeks.

While I never stop boating here on the Crystal Coast, I always look forward to those days when it is easy to spend time on the water.  I took my skiff for a quick ride down the White Oak River this past early March weekend.

The water temperature was around 50F out in the river and almost 55F back in the marshes but that is still a little chilly for serious boating and certainly too cool for the first kayaking trip of the season.

However, it will not be very long before I am regularly enjoying the zig and zag of the ride down the White Oak.

We have a lot of special places that you can easily visit here on the Crystal Coast.  If the winter blahs have you down, we have some special medicine to make you feel better as you are riding that roller coaster of spring weather.

Winter Found the Crystal Coast

I guess a wandering polar vortex could not be counted on to stay far enough to the north to leave us alone.

We did get iced over in late January here along the North Carolina coast.  Some people complained about everything shutting down in anticipation of our icing event but the reality is that we ended up in a lot less pain than folks farther south who ignored the snow and ice warnings.

We have thawed out from our icy adventure.  Fortunately we only have to endure significant snow or ice about once every three or four years. A taste of winter will not do us in but we are eagerly anticipating the better weather of spring and the activities that come with it.

It is normal to still be on a roller coaster as far as weather goes since this is February. However, we know things will get better and it will soon be time to think about enjoying the beach.

To get in the mood for better times on the coast, try our new $2.99 Kindle picture book, 100 Pictures, 1000 Words, A Crystal Coast Year.  It is the best of the 40,000 images that I took last year.  The book includes a link to a website where you can buy higher resolution versions of the images for only 99 cents.

You can get experiment with some similar images that I am letting people download for free as long as they do not use them commercially.  One of the images is the icy one of Raymond's Gut used in this post.

Almost Winter On The Coast

Winter Marsh in Raymond's Gut near Swansboro, NC

As much as I want to complain about our almost winter weather, I just cannot do it.  My friends in Tay Creek, New Brunswick got a big shot of snow this past weekend which is normal for them in the middle of December.

However, we got rain.  For much of the weekend our temperature stayed around 64F.  They are also scheduled for more snow.  During the same time we are looking forward to temperatures in the sixties with a few days in the seventies.

It was nice enough on this past Saturday morning that I took my skiff out on the river for a few minutes.  It was not cold enough for gloves when I took the boat out.  It is hard to call it winter if you can zoom down the river at 30 MPH and still not need gloves.

We are also still enjoying our gardens along the Southern Outer Banks.  We are getting some of our winter marsh visitors but they are not hanging around all day like they often do in our coldest months January and February.

Winter will come when it comes and until then we will enjoy the weather that we have.  If you want to compare the colors of the winter marsh to a fall marsh, click on this link and you will get to see a picture of the same area taken in the fall.