Following a period of weak winds, an air-dropped expendable bathythermograph (AXBT) survey on July 4, 1980) showed the Alboran Sea Gyre clearly present at 100-m depth but not at the surface. Winds on July 5 and 6 were from the west at >12 m/s, and both AXBT temperature distributions and satellite images then showed the gyre clearly dominating the temperature structure both at 100 m and at the surface. The disparity between the surface and 100-m temperature patterns on July 4 demonstrates that caution must be used when interpreting satellite imagery in the Alboran Sea (which has been used by several investigators as representing the gyre's structure). The change in the shallow temperature distribution from July 4 to 6 is opposite to what some investigators have proposed as the normal response of the gyre at atmospheric forcing.