While the sea breeze is generally regarded to be a solved problem, there is considerable theoretical disagreement regarding the behavior of the sea breeze near the critical latitude of 30 N. Observations in the Houston area illustrate key differences from the more extensively studied midlatitude sea breeze: very large horizontal scale and an apparently fundamental role played by inertia-gravity waves. Two-dimensional simulations are conducted using a hierarchy of model simplifications in order to explore the complications introduced by time-dependence, non-linearity, realistic friction, the nature of the forcing, and viscosity. These simulations aid in understanding and comparing previous theoretical work on the subject, but are not wholly in agreement with observations.