Rip current

Surf return currents (also Rip or executor, English: more detail rip currents or riptides ) are the seashores, the most common cause of bathing accidents.

Generally, the shafts are not connected to the bay of a directed flow. As before sandy beaches but usually form sandbars, or if other obstacles such as groynes or rock precede the beach, the water of the surf waves can not freely flow back to the sea. Therefore to gaps between the sand banks there is a bundled return flow of water can be driven by the bathers on the sea. Similar phenomena occur when the beach running parallel flows are diverted to breakwaters or headlands into the open sea. In these cases, inexperienced swimmers often tend to panic to swim against the current and then can drown invalidated. The flow rate can be up to 9 km / h ( about 5 knots) - a value which is also overwhelmed every professional swimmers. It makes sense, therefore, is sideways herauszuschwimmen from the often very limited and only a few hundred meters long offshore flow region or to be initially floating on the sea, then swim back slightly laterally offset.

The threat to beaches of the North and Baltic Seas is lower because the water waves in these marginal seas have less kinetic energy and thereby fail the return currents smaller than at beaches that are located directly on the ocean. Nevertheless, it has also come at the Danish coast already deaths.

Possible indicators Rippströme:

• Churning Waters
• Changes in coloring of the water relative to the environment
• Chronic gaps in the surf
• Quickly out of drifting kelp