Wave Producing Weather: Climate Changes

There are three main sources of the waves the move the sands of the beaches of the Atlantic Coast. In all months of the year we have storms that are connected to fronts. These storms are often called winter storms as they are most common in winter. Sometimes they are called northeasters because the winds on the northeast winds on the northwest side of the storms are strongest. The storms come from the west but the biggest winds come from the northeast. These storms produce waves from the northeast and they tend to move the sands of the beaches southward. In the summer we get swell from the large high pressure system that resides out in the Atlantic to the East an to the south. In summer we call this high pressure cell the Bermuda High. The air can be very hot and humid. These waves come from the southeast and move beach sands northward. Finally, we have hurricanes and tropical storms. The produce waves from the southeast and then later from the northeast as they make their track out of the topics and toward the high latitudes of North Atlantic.

The climate of these weather systems has been anything but constant in the last 100 years. In fact the changes seen above are very large changes in climate. We should expect that the history of beach sands to respond.