The gulf surge is a summertime phenomenon associated with the North American Monsoon that transports moisture from the Gulf of California into western portions of the United States. This phenomenon has been acknowledged operationally and by researchers for over 30 years. The surge is typically linked to the presence of some sort of low-pressure system such as an easterly wave, mesoscale convective system, or hurricane located near the southern end of the Gulf of California. Proposed mechanisms for the gulf surge are gravity currents, ageostrophic flows, Kelvin, or Rossby edge waves. The purpose of this paper is to describe the fundamental dynamics of each of these mechanisms and assess their plausibility through scale analyses and idealized numerical simulations and to suggest signatures that may appear in data and output of more sophisticated numerical models.