Fishing Boat Disaster In GoC Saturday Night

Jack Hales made a comment earlier that I want to repeat in this post.
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Bob, Have been traveling since the Surge moved into Arizona, but it appears that it was the main factor in the tragic drownings that took place early Sunday AM south of San Felipe. I recall years(decades ago) when there was a regular surface ob at Rocky Point(PPE) that when a surge occurred the winds at PPE were considerably higher than observed later at YUM. In this most recent case given the obvious strength of this surge it undoubtedly played a role in developing the waves that capsized the boat and observations at PPE would have been very helpful in the documentation of it.

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The fishing boat capsized in the northern GoC around 2 am early of Sunday morning the 3rd of July. there were several fatalities and 7 people remain missing. As Jack state the very strong surge event was occurring near the time of the disaster. Yuma had south winds of 40 to 48 mphfrom around midnight to 2 am - one can imagine that winds were much stronger to the south over the open water. The surge winds were probably strongly amplified by the very intense MCSs that had propagated northward up the east coast of the GoC. I don't know if there are surface observations around the northern GoC that can be recovered this long after the event.
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Jack - CONGRATULATIONS on your retirement after 46 years of service in the Weather Bureau and NWS!    Bob