Earthblog

You're planning your vacation and you want to know when is a good time to come... when is the weather the best ?  Well, we can have wonderful weather all year around.  My advice is if it's raining outside you might want to grab another cup of coffee and wait 15 minutes and those clouds very possibly may be gone. But if you really want to know about the weather ...

The average annual rainfall is 48 inches, the average January temperature 41 degrees and the average July temperature 79 degrees.
 

The weather is generally moderate all the year around ...  we can get rough cold weather in the winter and on rare occasions hurricanes in the summer.  Thankfully, hurricanes generally blow over the Outer Banks pretty fast and we often suffer less damage than the inland areas.  Actual data from 1992 to 2005: 9 hurricanes hit North Carolina, $757M in wind losses from 18 coastal counties and $1.7B for the rest of the state.

To give you an actual example...  when my son was getting married in Nags Head in June the sun was shining and the weather warm.  Meanwhile in Kitty Hawk they had a tropical cloud burst lasting an hour.  So, there are daily variations from town to town. Torrential rains could send beachgoers scattering at noon, but 20 minutes later it's sunshine.

We generally have mild winters and comfortable summers as you can see from the chart.  The Atlantic Ocean, which is slow to warm and cool and heats to a maximum of about 80 degrees in the summer, this affects the air temperature by keeping us cooler. 

The closeness to the ocean moderates the summer air temperatures by ~10 degrees compared to the mainland.

In the winter, disregarding the windchill factor, our air temperatures does just the opposite.   Air flowing over the Gulf Stream toward us, warms the winter air.

It seems to rain less in winter. 

In late summer evenings there can be plenty of thundershowers. The good part is that the skies are usually clear during the day.

Nor'easters (winds from the North East) occur most often in the fall and winter; they plague homeowners and fishermen alike.  The high winds keep boats at the docks, sometimes for up to a week.  The winds can wreak havoc on oceanfront properties.  If the high winds coincide with the high tide and a full moon, powerful storm waves can cover the land and cause beach erosion, structural damage, and both ocean and soundside flooding. 

Year-round residents see the bad weather as a trade-off, for living in paradise. They may be plenty of rough days but there are far more absolutely gorgeous days occurring year-round.  We generally do much better with our weather than the mainland.  Of course, if you live along the Eastern Seaboard you probably can't get here in winter because of your ice storms and we might be on the beach in shorts !

The wind blows most of the time at an average of 8 to 10 mph - the winds brought the Wright Brothers here in 1900.

Occasional gale force winds range from 30 to 35 mph.  In summer the wind blows mainly out of the southwest, often getting more breezy by late afternoon. 

Southwest winds are warm, and if you're on a beach facing east, they create a generally flat ocean but stir up the sound. 

When the wind comes out of the northeast it is colder.  Old-timers say that the wind always blows out of the northeast for an odd number of days, one, three, or five  before switching around again. Northeast winds create a rough ocean on east-facing beaches and are more predominant in fall and winter. 

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