About Delaware Bay¶
This Location File extends up the Delaware River to the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal, a sea-level, inland waterway navigable by deep-draft vessels. Delaware Bay is bounded on the northeast by the state of New Jersey and on the southwest by the state of Delaware. In addition to the Delaware River, the bay receives the waters of numerous streams and creeks of New Jersey and Delaware. It has few natural harbors, but Delaware Breakwater, at Cape Henlopen, provides Lewes, DE with an excellent protected anchorage. Delaware Bay is the natural route followed by shipping to and from Wilmington, DE, Philadelphia, PA, Camden, NJ, and Baltimore, MD.
Background¶
Delaware River ports receive the highest volume of petroleum products and crude oil on the eastern coast of the United States (Ford et al. 1992); the ports also receive one of the highest number of conventional (non-containerized) cargo ships. Ships entering the Delaware River enter either through Delaware Bay or the Chesapeake-Delaware Canal. (The Chesapeake-Delaware Canal is located near the northern-most part of Delaware on the Location File map.) The Delaware River Channel is 40 feet deep. Ships with a deeper draft anchor off Big Stone Beach and transfer cargo to smaller vessels. Circulation in the region is driven primarily by tides. Secondary circulation patterns result from winds and mean southward flowing off-shore flow that forces some water into Delaware Bay (Pape and Garvine 1982; Wong and Moses-Hall 1998). River flow does not have a significant impact (compared with tides) on surface currents in the lower river and bay (Pape and Garvine 1982).
Current Patterns¶
The Delaware Bay Location File uses four current patterns to simulate tidal and subtidal circulation. The tidal current pattern is scaled to tides 0.7 nautical miles ESE of Cape Henlopen (38° 47.97’N, 75° 4.9’W, NOS tidal prediction station #4021). Offshore flow is scaled to 3 cm/s offshore at 38° 53.9’N, 74° 44.9’W. The scaling constant was extrapolated from mean flow reported in Beardsley and Boicourt (1987) and from near-real time observations from Rutger’s Institute of Marine and Coastal Studies Coastal Ocean Dynamics Application Radar (CODAR) website.
Two wind-driven circulation patterns are used to simulate wind driven flow: one pattern from NW winds and another from SW winds. These two patterns are combined linearly to produce a current pattern appropriate for the user-defined wind field.
All current patterns were created with the NOAA Current Analysis for Trajectory Simulation (CATS) hydrodynamic application.
References¶
Oceanography
Beardsley, R. C. and W. C. Boicourt, 1987. On Estuarine and Continental-Shelf Circulation in the Middle Atlantic Bight. In Evolution of Physical Oceanography, B. A. Warren and C. Wunsch, eds., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 198-234.
Coastal Ocean Dynamics Applications Radar (CODAR) Real-Time Data
Real-time vector plots for offshore surface currents off southern New Jersey, courtesy of Rutgers Institute of Marine Coastal Studies.
Ford, R. G., D. Heinemann, M. L. Bonnell, and J. L. Casey, 1992. Computer Based Planning for Protection of Sensitive Delaware Bayshore Habitats from Oil Spill Impacts. Report prepared for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection Division of Science and Research.
NOAA Tides & Currents: Tide Data for Delaware
Tide data for Delaware stations
Pape, E. H. and R. W. Garvine, 1982. The Subtidal Circulation in Delaware Bay and Adjacent Shelf Waters. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 87 (C10), pp. 7955-7970.
Wong, K. C. and J. E. Moses-Hall, 1998. On the Relative Importance of the Remote and Local Wind Effects to the Subtidal Variability in a Coastal Plain Estuary. Journal of Geophysical Research, Vol. 103 (C9), pp. 18,393-18,404.
Wind and Weather
NOAA National Weather Service Graphical Forecasts
Click the Delaware Bay region to obtain local weather information.
NOAA National Weather Service (NWS) - Data from Delaware
Weather products for the state of Delaware.
Current offshore meteorological conditions at thousands of buoys located around the U.S. Click the Delaware Bay region on the interactive map, then click a station to view marine data.
NOAA National Weather Service (NWS)
Coastal waters forecast from Sandy Hook, NJ to Fenwick Island, DE to 20 NM offshore and Delaware Bay.
Observations and forecasts from nowCOAST, a GIS mapping portal to real-time environmental observations and NOAA forecasts.
Delaware River and Bay PORTS: All Meteorological Data
Meteorological data for Delaware River and Bay from NOAA PORTS (Physical Oceanographic Real-Time System), a program that supports safe and cost-efficient navigation.
Oil Spill Response
NOAA's Emergency Response Division (ERD)
Tools and information for emergency responders and planners, and others concerned about the effects of oil and hazardous chemicals in our waters and along our coasts.