Analysis of Bay-Breeze Events along the Western Shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay

Hourly surface data observations were utilized to identify bay-breeze events along the western shoreline of the Chesapeake Bay during the spring and summer months of a five-year period (March-August, 2001-2005). Bay-breeze events tend to be focused near the shoreline and peak in June with a second maximum in August, when the combination of weak zonal flow and a relatively large land-bay temperature contrast are most favorable for development; the existence of just one of these two phenomena is often insufficient for bay-breeze formation. Climatologically, the findings suggest high inter-annual variability in bay-breeze frequency, dependent on regional and synoptic-scale conditions, and that bay-breeze events are occasionally quite localized; not occurring simultaneously at each observation site. Finally, an index used in past studies was then employed to assess the potential prediction of these events and was found to be modestly reliable, with a tendency to over-predict the number of events and an inability to distinguish non-bay-breeze events.