Above: Rob Kelly by Michael Janusz
We care a lot about our community.
Old man winter does not. Winter just doesn’t care.
We’ve all become familiar with the term “polar vortex,” which refers to a mass of extremely cold air that normally stays contained over the Arctic. That’s not unusual during the winter. Problems occur when the strong winds that hold this cold air in place weaken or break down, allowing frigid Arctic air to spill southward into areas like the U.S. East Coast.
Though Jetty reaches every coastline in North America, our roots are on the East Coast, and particularly the Mid-Atlantic, which is just now digging out from perhaps the most brutal stretches of cold and swell since surfers first started donning dive suits and surfing through winters in the 1960s.
Winter came early this year. Surfers were pulling on thicker rubber earlier. The New Year got cold, but nothing like we haven’t seen before. Then on the third week of January, the East Coast got blasted by the first of a series of storms. Just as the swell was peaking, the storm turned to sleet leaving everything in our backyard a sheet of pure ice, and the surf temps bottomed out at 31 degrees.
Snow shovels were broken. Backs were broken.
The walkways over the dunes turned into a bobsled course. Undeterred, our ambassadors pulled on the gear and went barrel hunting, pulling into some of the meanest lefts in years.
This edit is only a portion of the dramatics from this winter featuring Jetty Ambassadors. Our friend John Bellingeri filmed much of it and created this edit to show what surfing through a record cold stretch is like.
Rob Kelly had two sessions of cold caves. Young Noah DeSimone staked his claim as a legitimate tube rider. Dave Werner and Brian Aji threaded monster pits. Ryan Leopold and Cody Hammer chased the swell to the Eastern Shore and had blissful snowy barrels with just their Outer Banks crew. Ben Gravy found a novelty wave entirely of slush.
The next system formed off the southeast coast at the end of January and pulled north, past our coastline, this time delivering swell without precipitation. But while we were already frozen, the temps dropped even further, enforced by even more frozen air and hard offshore winds. That swell was surfed in windchills below zero. The ice from the January storm was still thick. Seawater froze on the beach. National audiences were mystified by the waves and the frozen coastline
And just as Old Man winter began to loosen his icy grip, another powerful system wound up off the Southeast Coast, delivering historic snow and swell to North Carolina, Delmarva, New Jersey, Long Island, and New England. Buoys read 20 foot at 11 seconds. Snow fell at 2 to 3 inches per hour. Surfers had to literally dig out feet of snow and cut downed trees to even get on the roads where they crawled through the blizzard to the break. Our crew was at it again, this time joined by Mark Gilmartin, threading them on his backhand. Long Beach Island was ground zero for a historic session of deep tubes, stiff northwest winds, and white out snowfall. The entire surf world tuned in to Jetty’s backyard and ambassadors.
The weather has broken, but winter is far from over.
