As if the prospect of oil smothering Louisiana's marshes and Gulf coast beaches isn't bad enough, some people are worrying publicly that the Deepwater Horizon blowout could be felt beyond the Gulf of Mexico, with tar balls and contaminants smearing the Atlantic coast as well.
Climate activist Mike Tidwell, a Louisiana native, even suggested on the Diane Rehm public-radio talk show this morning that the Gulf oil leak could stretch all the way into the Chesapeake Bay.
The bay's probably safe for now, barring some really extraordinary events, says Bill Boicourt, an oceanographer with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. There's no real need to worry much about Ocean City's beaches, either.
But Boicourt says it''s possible - unlikely but possible - that the Gulf oil leak could be swept into the Atlantic, where some might wash ashore in Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
"Could it reach the Gulf Stream?" Boicourt asks. "That's a possibility."
If the prevailing winds change direction and begin blowing to the south, Boicourt says, it wouldn't take long for oil leaking from the site of the sunken Deepwater Horizon drilling rig to reach the Loop Current. That's a persistent clockwise flow of Gulf water that could carry oil to the southern tip of Florida, where it would connect with the powerful Gulf Stream that sweeps northward up the Atlantic coast.
While that could be bad news for beaches in the South, the Chesapeake and mid-Atlantic beaches are likely to be spared, Boicourt says, because the Gulf Stream veers away from the coast around Cape Hatteras in North Carolina.
How much oil would make such a long trip to the Atlantic, and whether it would be concentrated enough to pose any hazards to fish or wildlife there, is a question. But because they're closer to the source, Florida Bay and Tampa Bay may be more vulnerable, Boicourt says.
Meanwhile, to add to the what-ifs, the environmental group Greenpeace has superimposed the Gulf oil slick on a satellite photo of the mid-Atlantic to show what's in range if a similar blowout were to occur in the ocean off the Virginia coast. That's an area that until the Gulf disaster the Obama administration was close to opening up for oil and gas exploratory drilling.
Kert Davies, Greenpeace's research director, says the Gulf oil slick shown in its Mid-Atlantic nightmare image above is the same size and configuration as the projected one mapped in the Gulf by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It's just been turned 90 degrees to point westward toward the Atlantic coast, he says.
"We're not trying to be Chicken Little here," Davies says. "This is just a what-if scenario. This is what it could look like if it came to your neighborhood."
Oceanographer Boicourt says ocean currents tend to drift south along that portion of the Atlantic coast, but Greenpeace's what-if is not far-fetched.
While Ocean City might be spared if a spill occurred to our south, Boicourt says a stiff breeze can easily overpower currents and push a surface oil slick in other directions - north and west.
In which case, Boicourt says, "all bets are off."
(Image courtesy of Greenpeace)