What is a sea breeze?

AccuWeather Meteorologist Melissa Constanzer explains sea breezes-a phenomenon commonly observed near beaches.

Transcript

00:00Sea breeze. It's a common phenomenon if you've been at some beaches to encounter a breeze that blows in from the water.

00:07So basically wind off of a large body of water, which means, yes, it can happen on the Great Lakes.

00:12You can have a lake breeze, for example. But what is that sea breeze?

00:16Why does it happen so often? Because on the East Coast, typically our winds come out of the West across the U.S.

00:21So why do we get so many coming in from the East on those East Coast beaches?

00:25It's actually driven ultimately by temperature, but mostly what that temperature does is create a pressure difference.

00:32So pressure is what drives winds for us. But the temperature will help us get those pressure differences.

00:37And then that direction of the wind is always going to work its way from higher pressure to lower pressure.

00:42So that will drive our circulation. Large bodies of water heat up and cool down a little bit slower than land.

00:49If you think about it, that pool temperature never really changes on a hot summer day.

00:53But the air just above the pool certainly can vary quickly.

00:57So we know that those temperature differences can occur on air, in air, a lot faster than they can occur in water, which makes a difference.

01:05If we start off one morning at the beach, temperatures in the upper 70s more or less the same over land, over water.

01:12Now let's heat things up throughout the day with some of that sunshine out there.

01:15And all of a sudden the numbers go off to the races near 90 degrees.

01:18That warmer air has a lower pressure, is a little bit less dense, for example.

01:24So it's going to start to rise.

01:25And as it rises, that will allow that cooler air that is over the water to rush its way into shore, creating a boundary that you see.

01:34That's that sea breeze boundary.

01:35And this boundary can be prominent enough, actually, as it works its way inland from that cool air throughout the course of the day,

01:42that it can kick up showers and thunderstorms so we can capture sea breezes on radar.

01:48We can even see some of those thunderstorms over land because of it.