A high rip current risk covers both coastal St. Johns zones through late Thursday night. High is a defined word here. It means life-threatening rip currents are likely in the surf zone. It reaches coastal Nassau, coastal Duval and coastal Flagler as well, and it was issued at six minutes past two Tuesday afternoon.

The water that makes them is northeast wind. At 1:26 Wednesday morning the wave buoy about twelve miles east northeast of the St. Augustine Inlet printed seas of 6.9 feet at a peak period of seven seconds. Its wave summary at the same minute gives a wind wave of 6.9 feet at 7.1 seconds out of the northeast. Under that, a swell of 0.7 feet at 10.5 seconds out of the east northeast.

That is the whole sea in one component. The swell under it stands at about eight inches. What a boat meets leaving the inlet is a seven second chop running almost seven feet.

The forecast said it would go that way. The coastal waters product issued at 2:26 Tuesday afternoon gave the water from Fernandina Beach to St. Augustine seas of six to seven feet Wednesday, occasionally to nine. It put the wave detail as northeast seven feet at seven seconds. Nothing else was in it. The buoy was at 6.9 feet and 7.1 seconds eleven hours later.

The advisories, and the hours on them

Three small craft advisories cover this coast until 5 a.m. Thursday. They run Altamaha Sound to Fernandina Beach, Fernandina Beach to St. Augustine, and St. Augustine to Flagler Beach, each of them out to 60 nautical miles. The text gives northeast winds of 20 to 25 knots with gusts to 30 and seas of five to seven feet.

On the pier at St. Augustine Beach the wind at 1 a.m. was 9.8 metres per second from 70 degrees, gusting to 11.8. That is about 19 knots gusting to about 23. The pressure there was 1022.2 hectopascals and rising.

The surf zone forecast, issued at five Tuesday afternoon, gives Wednesday a surf height of four to six feet and northeast winds of 15 to 20 miles an hour at the beaches. Surf height is the breaker at the sand. That is a different quantity from the buoy’s significant wave height twelve miles out, and from the forecast seas across a marine zone. The three will not agree and are not meant to.

Three buoys, and two degrees between the ends of the run

Off Fernandina Beach, station 41112 printed 1.8 metres at a six second peak period and 29.3 degrees Celsius at the same hour, which is about six feet and about 85 degrees. Off Ponce Inlet in Volusia County, station 41070 printed 1.5 metres at six seconds and 28.1 degrees, or about five feet and about 83 degrees. The buoy off this county sat between them on height. On temperature it sat near the bottom, at 82.8 degrees, which is the figure the National Data Buoy Center prints itself.

Roughly two degrees separate the north end of this run from the south end this morning, and the warmer water is the northern one. The tide gauge at the Mayport bar pilots dock, thirty miles north in the mouth of the St. Johns, read 84 degrees at 2 a.m. That is river water rather than ocean water and it is not the Matanzas.

Nobody publishes an observed water temperature in the St. Augustine Inlet, in the Matanzas, or at St. Augustine Beach. The gauge that stood at the beach was removed in 2004. The nearest instruments in the water are the buoy twelve miles out and the gauge at Mayport.

Today’s tide, and the dates that are coming

The predictions for St. Augustine Beach give a low at 6:07 this morning at 0.9 feet on mean lower low water. The high comes at 12:33 this afternoon at 5.1 feet. The second low is at 7:02 this evening at 1.3 feet. The station’s own datum sheet sets NAVD88 3.13 feet below MLLW, on the 1983 to 2001 epoch. On that datum the midday high stands at about 2.0 feet. This evening’s low sits about 1.9 feet under it.

Those are harmonic predictions. They carry no wind and no rain. There is 20 to 25 knots of northeast on the water this morning that they know nothing about.

Nothing opens or closes today. The next date that changes anything is four weeks out. Flounder closes Oct. 15 and stays closed through Nov. 30, in Gulf and Atlantic state waters both, at a 14 inch minimum and five per person until then. Stone crab opens the same day. Hogfish runs on this coast until Oct. 31. Atlantic gag grouper has been closed since Aug. 2. The open gag season advertised at the top of the state’s grouper page is the Gulf one.

No operation on this run of coast published a dated catch report, so there is nothing here about what anybody caught.