"I don't go in unless it's 70," she said. "My husband loves (Cape Cod), too. So if it's 50-plus, he always goes in. But I need it warmer."

Jim Eberwine, a National Weather Service meteorologist who lives in Absecon, knows the cold water has been affecting many local vacations this summer.

"It's certainly below normal. It has been cold," but it's not making any history - at least, not yet - said Eberwine.

According to Eberwine, the worst year on record is 1988, when the ocean water off Atlantic City dipped to 49 degrees. The other day, he said he noticed an ocean thermometer off Avalon hitting 54 degrees - 5 degrees above the 20-year-old summer record.

"That was just an extended, extended period of cold water," Eberwine said.

Southwest winds blow sun-warmed, shallow water offshore, away from the southern New Jersey coast, Eberwine said. When that happens, colder water from the deeper ocean rises up to replace it - a phenomenon meteorologists call upwelling.

Eberwine said the southwest flow has been "unrelenting" because of an area of high pressure that's been parked off the coast for a few months now.

And during the recent heat wave, the flow of hot air has been so strong, it's managed to trump the sea-breeze cycle that usually rules local beaches on summer days, Eberwine said.

In that cycle, the sun heats the land in the morning. When hot air rises, cooler air that rushes in off the ocean - a sea breeze - fills the vacuum that's created.

That sea breeze usually has the added benefit of blowing in warm water - the opposite action of the southwest winds.

So the good news for people on local beaches and in - or not in - the ocean is that if the wind switches, the water temperature can go up as fast as it went down.

"If they turn and become onshore (winds), you'll see it warm up real fast," Eberwine said, adding that there is plenty of warm water not far away from us - just 8 or 10 miles off the coast.

"The coldest water right now is right on the beaches," he said, "and as you go out, it warms up a bit."

Still, he's not promising a major shift in the winds, and until that happens, the mixture of cold water and hot air can also create the fog effect that visitors to many beaches saw blowing by them Saturday and Sunday.

Eberwine said that in 1988 - the year of that 49-degree ocean - the cold water blew in with a heat wave that set high-temperature records farther inland. On the beaches, that combination created much thicker fog than we saw over the weekend.

"We haven't had a lot of episodes of fog this year," he said.

At least not yet - but there's still a lot of this strange summer to come. And maybe some history, too.

"I'm just waiting to see something close to that (record of 49)," Eberwine said, "and this could be a really strong candidate to challenge 1988."

E-mail Martin DeAngelis:

MDeangelis@pressofac.com