After checking the flags, my method is to stand in the water's edge and see how much sand gets sucked out from under my feet. If it's enough to change my balance, no swimming, just wading/playing.
Don't stand to close to the dredge!!!!After checking the flags, my method is to stand in the water's edge and see how much sand gets sucked out from under my feet. If it's enough to change my balance, no swimming, just wading/playing.
Also here is the National Weather Services forecast/outlook page for rip currents so that you can arm yourself with the current information before you go out.
http://www.ripcurrents.noaa.gov/forecasts.shtml
Just because its not red flags doesn't mean there are not rips....
We have Riptide 101 (with diagrams) the first beach day we're down every year, but I'm wondering, just how hard is it to adjust your body to swim sideways away from one? Do most people who have fatal encounters with a rip know what to do but panic? or do they not know how to swim out of one and just keep swimming forward? or do they know HOW to swim out of one but can't because it is physically almost impossible to swim sideways when caught in it?
I have a real fear of these. I have night terrors where my boys are swimming in very calm waters. I'm on shore watching and the tide rips them out to sea and I am standing on the beach totally alone unable to scream for help. The kind of nightmare where you wake up sobbing![]()
Actually there is no such thing as either, they were made up by the media years ago. They are really called Runouts but in the age of Jim Cantore they ran with it!