Inland, it was super hot. On the ocean, it was extra cold. But as Chris Wood, the owner of Woody's Ocean Grille in Sea Bright, looked at the detailed notes from a spreadsheet he keeps to track business conditions, he found the weather at the beach was picture perfect.
June, he said, was fantastic. July was great. August, aside from one gloomy weekend, was on a roll.
"We had very good beach weather every single weekend, almost," Wood said. "When I'm looking at my statistics and the weather, it's very, very good."
As the Jersey Shore's summer tourism season comes to an end this weekend, operators say the weather cooperated just enough for them to chalk it up as a success. Visitors faced with a high cost of living and slowing economy still made their way to local hotels, restaurants, beaches and boardwalks to escape the stress of their daily lives.
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When they arrived, they found the Shore was an oasis, offering them relief from downright bizarre weather found just miles — or even blocks — away. Heat indexes in June soared above 100 degrees, making it the second-hottest June in a record that dates to 1895.
Meanwhile, the wind patterns sent the ocean temperature plummeting to 49 degrees one day in June, a charter fishing boat operator said, making it too cold to fish.
On the beach though? "I would say, if you're a beach lover, it was a good summer," said David Robinson, New Jersey's state climatologist and geography professor at Rutgers University.
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By the end of the season, business owners sounded like they could improve on last year, when the Monmouth and Ocean County tourism industry generated $8.6 billion, a 4.6% improvement from 2022 according to Tourism Economics, a research group.
It is a segment of the economy that lines up each summer for a 14-week sprint, hoping to make enough money during the peak season to carry them through the rest of the year.
Among them are Cord and Dedra Weiss, who were living in Austin, Texas, and decided to buy a bed and breakfast. They scoured the East Coast, searching for a promising property, before purchasing the Tandem Bike Inn, an eight-bedroom bed-and-breakfast on 10th Avenue in Belmar, last December.
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Dedra wakes up each day before 6 a.m. to cook for as many as 16 people, while Cord, a musician who isn't used to rising early, sleeps another hour. But they said they have no complaints; the inn has been almost fully booked this year with guests arriving not only from northern New Jersey and New York, but also Germany, Latvia, Spain and South Africa.
Their visitors included Alex Crespa, who works at a rehabilitation clinic near his home in Yardley, Pennsylvania, and girlfriend Victoria Szymanski, a second-grade teacher from Flemington. They were staying for two nights this week and trying to figure out how to tack on a third.
Szymanski, 49, said times were tight; she worked two jobs in addition to teaching. But the Tandem Bike Inn also provided beach passes and bikes, making it affordable enough for her to take a brief vacation before the school year started.
"If we're talking about a home to buy, that's a different story," said Crespa, 46. "If you really want to come to the beach you're going to pay extra money. But compared to other places …"
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Since emerging from the worst of the pandemic in 2022, consumers have benefitted from a strong job market and rising wages. But they also have struggled to keep up with high inflation, which prompted the Federal Reserve Board to raise interest rates and put the brakes on the economy.
Consumers this summer were more selective in where they spent their money, observers said. But they continued to spend.
- In Seaside Heights, weekday attendance was down this year, but the borough increased beach badge fees, helping it make up for the decline in traffic, administrator Christopher Vaz said.
- Little Bungalow, a boutique in Surf City, had its busiest summer in its eight-year history thanks to visitors who found relief on Long Beach Island from the sweltering heat and humidity inland, owner Alexandria Roth said.
- In Oceanport, 38,976 people attended Haskell Day at Monmouth Park in July, the biggest crowd since 60,983 came to watch Triple Crown winner American Pharoah race in 2015. Betters wagered a record $21.74 million and watched Belmont Stakes winner Dornoch win a thriller at the Haskell.
- In Asbury Park, Mutiny BBQ Co. owner Tom Dunphy said he and his staff endured stifling temperatures on Memorial Drive and tried to keep prices reasonable. The strategy worked; the restaurant and catering operation were so busy that some weekends Dunphy ran out of food.
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His takeaway? "It was all very weather-dependent," Dunphy said. "I think we've seen that become the dominant part of the conversation here in town, where, especially Asbury Park, I felt like it used to do well regardless of the weather. Now we're seeing the profound effect it's having on us and people coming in. But overall, we're happy with how the summer went."
The weather didn't cooperate for everyone. Some restaurants not lucky enough to get relief from the sea breeze in June and July decided to close briefly to give their overheated staffs a break . On the ocean, the breeze created upwelling, pushing the warm weather away and causing the cold weather to rise to the surface.
Capt. Dave Riback, who operates the Queen Mary party boat in Point Pleasant Beach and noted the ocean temperature of 49 degrees on June 27, said visitors — and the fish — stayed away until the weather patterns began to change in August.
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"The summer overall was underwhelming," Riback said. "But the last few weeks made up for it."
For the summer of 2024, the weather was fickle. Overall, the season likely was one of the 10 warmest on record, Robinson, the state climatologist, said. But businesses separated by just a few miles could have had different fortunes.
June had blistering heat and frigid water on the same day. How did it affect business at Woody's in Sea Bright?
Wood looked again at his spreadsheet and scrolled to June. His notes said otherwise. "The first 10 days were very, very rough, and then we started to kick it into gear," he said.
Michael L. Diamond is a business reporter for the Asbury Park Press who has been writing about the New Jersey economy and health care industry since 1999. He can be reached at mdiamond@gannettnj.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Jersey Shore summer 2024 was great at the beach, but what about the business?
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