Chocolate milk ocean???

I live on Eastern Lake, and have observed Eastern Lake Inlet pretty much my whole life. It it a truly fascinating and ever-changing experience. It's somewhat like the weather, but in a much slower mode. I've seen it run way past Commodore's Retreat to the west, and I've seen it completely disappear after Dennis in '05. After Ivan in '04 it snaked way back east. If you were good at SoWal search, you might can gather postings of the breakouts, because someone usually mentions it. But for me, gathering too much scientific data on it might just spoil the mystique of this wonderful event. My two cents.

To some of the posters on this thread who were alarmed about the "coffee-colored" lake water, I must amend my statements about the water being "beer-colored". As of late, the water does seem almost "coffee-colored" (or maybe a dark porter or stout.) I've been around a long time and this is about as dark as I have ever seen it. I can only surmise that the incredible rainfall this last month or two contributed to the production of the tannin in the trees, and it is making its way to the coastal dune lakes and then out to sea. Mother Nature will bring things back into balance, probably without the help of the SoWal forum's attempts to understand her.

The water everywhere here is so high- and the water table is not very deep, so after a month of rain, nothing is draining fast! The lakes are backed way up into swamps and creeks, and all that organic matter is now coming out with the draining water.

We had a fine time swimming in the "coffee water" of the Western Lake outfall at Grayton today. A lifeguard posted red "no swim" flags at several rip current locations at Grayton, but that didn't stop several jackass dads from swimming with their toddler age children. Hard to relax when you see that!

yes, we enjoyed Grayton Beach (lake swimming only) yesterday morning for a few hours. There was a red flag, but a no swimming red flag on the beach near the water - I had not seen that before. Anyway, the lake and gulf were very dark, churning, beautiful. We had to keep the kids away from the outflow area where the lake empties into the Gulf - it was just a little scary.

Almost no one was out while we were there because of rain that was happening everywhere BUT out on Grayton Beach. Nice to have it to ourselves.

The looks of the water and weather and clouds yesterday was just mystical, beautiful, strange and yes - dark chocolatey!

One more comment on the "chocolately beer" phenomena: the word "okaloosa" (as in, Okaloosa County) means "black water" in Choctaw Indian dialect, so this phenomena has been around a long time.

One more comment on the "chocolately beer" phenomena: the word "okaloosa" (as in, Okaloosa County) means "black water" in Choctaw Indian dialect, so this phenomena has been around a long time.

Thanks for this historical information! We love the outflows; so unique. We were on the beach this afternoon at seagrove. Water was beautiful. So glad to be here. Lovely.