45°
7 p.m. Yo, Bill. Come strong or don’t come at all. Punk. We’re still hearing warnings of off-the-coast conditions that threaten to blow us all the way to Oz. But no one on the ground has seen any threat — other than the clenched fist of the riptide that swimmers have been smart enough to avoid. Time to cue up the Beach Boys and raise a toast in memory to Frank Field.
4 p.m. The sun is still burning off the haze and the breeze is blowing cool. If you’re watching Yanks-Red Sox and it’s not at a tiki bar, you’re missing out. Bill isn’t bullying anybody down here, where the surf is turning cartwheel after crashing cartwheel. Our hosts bought sushi, which can only mean one thing: surf and turf! As in: tuna and burgers.
2 p.m. The beach is glorious. The winds are calm. And the waves? One word: Swell. Looks like a California surf, with crests easily breaking 12 feet in some spots. The sky’s backdrop is still mostly blue, with sheets, blankets and comforters of clouds slowly rolling through. Both the heat and humidity have stuck around — calm before the storm, it seems.
Still, the Jersey Shore braces for Bill, warn media members still in their civvies. A hard rain’s gonna fall, too, they say. Flooding, even. Maybe plague. Or locust.
New York took a hit: Large waves kept six beaches in Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens closed. Jones Beach is open only surfing. Robert Moses State Park is shut entirely.
Who knows? Maybe we’ll get a repeat of yesterday, when a brilliantly sun-lit dawn suddenly got whacked by a monstrous drive-by thunderstorm. For now, though, it’s BBQ time!
Word is that Bill is swirling way off in the Atlantic, with no plans to land. Yet the rip tide that it’s raised is strong enough to keep a lot of people out of the water — ‘cept for those surfers reveling in a dream come true.
One police officer said surfers further down the Shore gazed at the whitecaps “with their eyes popping out.”
At this point, it could be worth the gamble to come down: It’ll stay humid, with temps in the low 80s.
And if you’re into spectator sports, you can sit on the boardwalk and watch the water show.
PHOTO: Courtesy of the Atlantic City Press
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