\n<\/p>\n
On August 19 Hurricane Erin is crawling past the Bahamas as a strong Category 2 storm and is due to head toward the Carolinas and then veer northeast over the open Atlantic Ocean. Although the storm\u2019s eye may never come within 300 miles of the mainland U.S., most of the East Coast\u2014from Miami to Maine\u2014is under a moderate or high risk of rip currents.<\/p>\n
U.S. rip current risk map for August 18-19, 2025. Red indicates life-threatening rip currents are likely. Swimming conditions are unsafe for all levels of swimmers. Stay out of the water. Always follow advice from the local beach patrol and flag warning systems.<\/p>\n
In the U.S. rip currents cause about 100 fatal drownings each year and are responsible for four out of five beach rescues, according to a 2019 study. Here\u2019s the science behind how rip currents work, why hurricanes can cause them at such great distances from land and what beachgoers need to know about the threat.<\/p>\n
If you’re enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<\/p>\n
Rip currents are a common phenomenon even without a hurricane roiling the distant ocean, says Melissa Moulton, a coastal physical oceanographer at the University of Washington. \u201cRip currents are strong seaward currents that are caused by breaking waves,\u201d she says. \u201cThey can be as narrow as an alleyway or as wide as a multilane highway; they can last for just a few minutes or sometimes a number of hours.\u201d At their fastest, they can beat an Olympic swimmer.<\/p>\n
These currents are an inevitable by-product of ocean physics on a complex shoreline, says Chris Houser, a coastal geomorphologist at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Waves \u201care constantly moving water toward that shoreline,\u201d Houser says. That might sound obvious, but there\u2019s a corollary people may not think about too carefully, he adds: all that water has \u201cgot to go somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
That \u201cwhere\u201d is back out to sea, and rip currents are one of the key routes by which water gets there. A rip current develops from variations in how waves break along a coastline, causing water from crashing waves to stay at the surface and flow sideways, then out to sea. (If the water instead travels down and straight back out, it forms an undertow, although the two terms are sometimes conflated.)<\/p>\n
READ MORE: Why Storm Surge Is Dangerous\u2014And Becoming More Frequent<\/p>\n
Rip currents are more likely to develop when a coastline is more complex, in terms of either the visible shore\u2014a feature such as a jetty or a rocky point can trigger rip currents\u2014or the underwater topography of sandbars that raise the ocean floor. \u201cOver a shallow sandbar, you\u2019re getting larger breaking waves compared to, say, over a channel or a deeper spot,\u201d says Greg Dusek, a coastal physical oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That creates variation in breaking waves and funnels outgoing water toward deeper areas that can form rip currents.<\/p>\n
Where the coastline is shallower, larger waves can form, pushing more water onto shore. This water can then be forced back out to sea where the underwater topography is deeper, forming a rip current (red arrow).<\/p>\n
Gary Hincks\/Science Source<\/p>\n
The result is a misleading picture at the beach. \u201cYou\u2019re looking along the shoreline, and you see areas of waves that are breaking and areas that are not breaking,\u201d Houser says. \u201cYou might actually think that the calm water is safest. It\u2019s probably a rip current.\u201d (Although that doesn\u2019t mean the breaking waves are safe either.)<\/p>\n
The picture becomes even more confusing when a hurricane passes far from shore, as Hurricane Erin is doing this week. With the stormy winds hundreds of miles away, conditions onshore might be gorgeous\u2014but a hurricane can still make its presence known.<\/p>\n
Just as an earthquake can trigger a tsunami that crosses an entire ocean, even a distant hurricane can whip up beach surf. \u201cYou might be standing on the beach, and it\u2019s a sunny day, no strong winds,\u201d Moulton says. \u201cBecause waves transport energy over very long distances very efficiently, we\u2019re not seeing the winds or anything from the hurricane, but we will see the wave energy.\u201d<\/p>\n
The sizes of waves produced by a hurricane are determined by the sustained windspeeds inside the storm, the amount of ocean that the storm covers and the speed at which it travels. In general, faster winds, a larger area and slower movement tend to lead to taller waves that travel farther. When those waves hit a shoreline, they\u2019re more likely to trigger rip currents. \u201cThe bigger the waves, the stronger the rip\u2014if you have the physical conditions present for rips to be there,\u201d Houser says.<\/p>\n
Hurricane Erin, swirling through the Atlantic Ocean on August 18, 2025.<\/p>\n
And the risk of rip currents can linger long after a storm has passed, Dusek warns. That\u2019s in part because the storm may have reshaped the visible or underwater topography of a beach. And when a distant storm is creating waves that are six or 10 feet tall, people typically know to stay out of the ocean. But when waves become a little less dramatic and local conditions are beautiful, it\u2019s more difficult to see the dangers of rip currents.<\/p>\n
Dusek expects that rip current risks along the East Coast could remain high through the rest of the week and perhaps into the weekend. That\u2019s particularly dangerous toward the end of summer, when people flock to the beach. \u201cIn the wintertime, we have lots of winter storms up and down the East Coast, but rip currents aren\u2019t typically a concern because no one\u2019s swimming,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Moulton, Houser and Dusek all agree that staying safe from rip currents means following two guidelines: only swim at beaches where a lifeguard is present and obey any warnings from lifeguards or local officials about staying out of the water.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they have a red flag flying, it\u2019s not because they\u2019re being overly cautious,\u201d Houser says. \u201cThey are seeing something that you can\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you do happen to get caught in a rip current, Houser says, advice on what to do has changed in recent years. Officials used to recommend people try to swim parallel to shore to \u201cbreak the grip of the rip.\u201d But in the heat of the moment, it\u2019s difficult to know which way is which, he says. So officials have pivoted to \u201cflip, float, follow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cFlip means don\u2019t put your feet down; flip so that your head is up and you are floating on your back,\u201d Houser says. \u201cThen you start to follow the rip current. Allow it to take you slightly.\u201d He\u2019s done this and says that, even with a floatation device, it\u2019s terrifying. But instead of wasting your strength against a fierce current, the strategy allows you to get your bearings and signal to a lifeguard while reducing the risk of drowning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On August 19 Hurricane Erin is crawling past the Bahamas as a strong Category 2 storm and is due to head toward the Carolinas and then veer northeast over the open Atlantic Ocean. Although the storm\u2019s eye may never come within 300 miles of the mainland U.S., most of the East Coast\u2014from Miami to Maine\u2014is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16685,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[9986,9470,2160,8849,7037,8473,3317],"class_list":{"0":"post-16684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-currents","9":"tag-erin","10":"tag-hundreds","11":"tag-hurricanes","12":"tag-miles","13":"tag-rip","14":"tag-trigger"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}