Weather During NFL Boat Trip, Search in Florida

UPDATE 3/3: One person was rescued yesterday and the search continues for the others. Because of seasonally cool water temperatures in the Gulf, hope is not high. This article says that the boat was overturned by a wave "Saturday Night," but we don't know when. A radar animation that I pulled from RadarPlus (you can download it here) does not show anything that could have caused high winds or waves until at least 3 AM, really not until 7 AM, and the buoy graph (shown below) didn't show significant waves until 7 AM.

FoxNews says that a boat containing NFL players Corey Smith and Marquis Cooper disappeared off of Clearwater, Florida Saturday night. The article notes that it was a 21-foot boat 50 miles offshore. Although waves as high as 14.4 feet offshore and wind gusts to 43 mph onshore hampered search efforts yesterday (see map below), the weather was much calmer on Saturday until very late at night.

The NWS was quoted as describing the Saturday conditions thusly:

If their return was delayed until sunrise Sunday, they certainly would have encountered rapidly building waves and winds. Below is a graph of the waves at Buoy #42099, though it is more than 100 miles offshore, there are no stations closer to the coast. The sudden increase in waves is around daybreak Sunday.