Analysis of the western shore Chesapeake Bay bay-breeze

Hourly surface data observations were employed to identify days on which bay-breezes occurred along the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. The data were from the warm season of a five-year period (March through September, 2001 through 2005). Bay-breezes tend to have limited inland penetration and bay-breeze days peak in June and August. Bay-breeze days are shown to usually occur under conditions of weaker zonal flow and stronger thermal contrast compared to non-bay-breeze days. A traditional index based on the above-mentioned variables was evaluated for prediction of bay-breeze days and was found to be only modestly reliable, with a tendency to over-predict the number of bay-breeze days. Discussion is devoted to the theoretical improvement of the index. Finally, recommendations for future work are provided, focusing on potential methods for testing the revised index on a bay-breeze dataset.