Far out in Atlantic, Lee poses risk of rip currents
As a lifelong surfer, Josh Wagner always appreciated the swells from distant hurricanes off Florida’s coast that can bring in clean, beautiful, rolling waves.
As a beachfront homeowner on the state’s Atlantic coast – who might have lost his home south of Daytona Beach, Florida, without hopping on a tractor in the middle of the night during Hurricane Nicole last fall – he now fears the erosion and destruction a hurricane can bring.
Hurricane Lee could be the worst of both, Wagner told USA TODAY. Its waves are forecast to be choppy, lousy for surfing and come with a high risk of rip currents. Any big, rough waves could rip away the sand that returned to the beaches near Ponce Inlet since Nicole.
Similar fears will ripple northward along the entire Atlantic coast this week. Lee is forecast to move northward parallel to shore a few hundred miles to the east, bringing huge waves and hazardous surf from Florida to Maine.
Though the significant winds are likely to stay offshore for most of the U.S. coast, rip currents and dangerous surf are expected, according to the National Hurricane Center and National Weather Service offices along the coast. Bigger waves and rip currents already have begun to reach East Coast beaches, the weather service said Monday, and that’s only expected to increase.
“It’s going to produce a tremendous amount of energy in the ocean in the form of traditional ocean waves,” Jamie Rhome, the hurricane center’s deputy director, told USA TODAY. “When that energy strikes the coast, it produces this huge rip current risk.”
Rip currents are particularly worrisome for weather officials because 2023 already has been a deadly year: At least 75 deaths are thought to be attributed to rip currents and hazardous surf conditions, the third-highest year since record-keeping started in 2002.
A report published by the American Meteorological Society in August concluded that the percentage of direct fatalities attributed to tropical cyclonerelated rip currents has doubled. The authors found:
• Direct fatalities during tropical cyclone landfalls rose from 6% from 19632012 to 15% from 2013-2022.
• Fatalities often occur one or two at a time from distant storms hundreds of miles offshore.
• Florida, North Carolina and New Jersey experienced the highest number of tropical cyclone-related surf and rip current deaths.
“The reason rip currents are so deadly is because all the other hazards in a hurricane have a visual cue,” Rhome said. “Even if you don’t believe the forecasters, you’ll believe your own eyes.
“The air surrounding a hurricane sinks, and that sinking air creates cloud-free conditions and warm days,” he said.
“That’s near-perfect beach weather. People flock to the beach and there’s no visual clue that anything is wrong. There’s nothing to see that may tell you you need to be cautious.”
Wagner said rip currents seem to be more prevalent in the soft sand offshore since the hurricanes.