http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-05-23/news/bs-md-oil-maryland-beaches-20100520_1_tar-balls-gulf-stream-atlantic-currents
Atlantic currents should keep most oil at sea
May 23, 2010|By Frank D. Roylance, The Baltimore Sun

Crude from the BP blowout in the Gulf of Mexico has now entered currents that will carry it out into the Atlantic Ocean and up the East Coast. But experts say the worst that beachgoers in Maryland are likely to encounter might be a few sandy tar balls – soft, asphalt-like blobs that can do little more than stain your feet.
Communities along the southeastern coast, especially in Florida, might have a close encounter with the oil, said Jim Carton, chairman of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland.
“But there’s good news for us,” he said. “The current leaves the continental shelf at about Cape Hatteras [N.C.], and heads northeast. Parts of North America north of Cape Hatteras should be fairly safe from this stuff.”

Barring a hurricane or some other storm that blows surface waters and tar balls westward from the Gulf Stream onto Delmarva beaches, Carton said, “it should pass us by.”
That’s what Ocean City officials expect, too.
“We’ve certainly been made aware that [the oil] could go out into the Gulf Stream,” said Donna Abbott, a spokeswoman for the Town of Ocean City. “But from what I’ve heard, there would be less than 1 percent, if it even made it this far, that would be of any significance to our beaches.”
“We Š feel for the people in the gulf who are going through this. Any coastal community would,” she said. “But we Š have not been led to believe there is any real potential there for harm to the coast.”
“If tar balls do appear,” Abbott said, “we Š have an outstanding public works department and other staff members who can handle any cleanup situation.”
Satellite radar imagery released Thursday by the European Space Agency showed a long tendril of the spilled oil reached the gulf’s Loop Current on Tuesday.
From there, Carton said, it will surely begin to flow south toward the Florida Straits and then up the East Coast. Moving at about 2 mph, it could reach Maryland’s latitudes in less than three weeks.
“Somebody asked whether this Memorial Day could be affected by this, and I figure there’s no way,” Carton said. “But it could be a summer issue for parts of the East Coast Š and Florida would get it before anyone else.”
Carton described the Loop Current as the key player in the Gulf of Mexico. Warm water from the Caribbean Sea streams into the gulf between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and the western tip of Cuba. The only way out is through the Florida Straits – the passage between the Florida Keys and Cuba.
But while the current’s entrance into and exit from the gulf are constrained by geography, the loop itself is not, Carton explained. It moves around. Sometimes it pinches off and sends a ring current drifting westward.
“Some oil may circulate in one of those rings that tend to head west into Texas,” Carton said.

Special thanks to Richard Charter