So why has the water been so cold.


1. 90% are blaming the thousands of cold blooded pommes in the
water at the moment. Here are two others...

2. Esky ice.
"Every weekend when we finish our barby and beers at Manly, we throw the ice
out of the eskys off near the Bower. It appears that the constant
north-easters have been blowing the floating ice down to Bondi and cooling
down the local waters. Normally in the southerlies it would float up to
Longy." Ben Grauer

But here is a more scientific reason: (from Allan Young)
3. Ekman Transport.
"The short answer is that these conditions affect much of the NSW coastline,
and are caused by several days in a row of fresh to strong NE winds.

You need the winds to blow for a few days because it takes a lot to peel off
the top level of warm water and let the deeper cold water rise up. This is
an 'upwelling' and can bring cold water from hundreds of metres below the
surface.

Thats the easy part. What most people can't get their head around is why a
wind from the north east (ie hotter regions) doesn't blow warm water onto
the beach.

So here is where the phenomenon of "Ekman transport???" kicks in. Ekman
figured out that the end effect of several days of a northerly or nor'easter
is to push surface water 90 degrees to the left of the wind direction. To
save you the maths - it means surface water gets transported east and south
east. Thats out to sea. But it doesn't transport the deeper colder water
nearly as much. Result - warm surface water sitting offshore; cold water at
the beach.

So before we all complain about the water temp....bring on the NE'ers

ummm ... it is the Nor easters that do it

when it blows for days on end the top layer of water gets blown away and the water gets replaced by deeper (colder) water

its called the farkitsbeensiclately effect

sorry fitzy gold coast is on the wrong angle

The water gets cold sometimes here too but usually when the wind is more northerly and turns brown.