Solutions of a viscoinertial western‐boundary‐layer problem arising in physical oceanography are discussed for both no‐slip and stress‐free boundary conditions. A fairly complete characterization of the behavior of the solutions in a number of regimes is presented using the techniques of regular perturbation expansion, matched asymptotic expansion, and rescaling of both regular and singular solutions. A comparison with the actual solutions found by extensive numerical computations is given. Parametrization of solutions in terms of the unknown first (or second) derivative at the origin, for which a useful analytic approximation is developed, provides a convenient characterization of the entire family.