

#Day one journal tv
"The TV meteorologists pick up on it, and that probably is the biggest dissemination of the information," said Glenn Field, warning-coordination meteorologist for the weather service in Norton. Local National Weather Service offices like the one in Norton, Massachusetts, which covers Rhode Island, have access to the national model as they put out advisories, assessing the rip-current risk at low, medium or high. The earlier prediction has the potential to substantially increase awareness and reduce drownings,” he said in a NOAA article on the model.

“Before this, forecasters were manually predicting rip currents on a large section of the ocean twice a day and only a day or two into the future. The model means forecasters can predict rip currents with more certainty than ever before, according to Dusek. The model uses wave and water level information from the National Weather Service's Nearshore Wave Prediction System to predict the risk of rip currents on a scale of 0 to 100%, NOAA says. beaches up to six days out, according to NOAA. In February 2021, NOAA launched a national rip current forecast model developed by Dusek that can predict the hourly probability of rip currents along U.S. The ability of forecasters to predict days when rip currents will happen has improved, thanks to the work of scientists like Dusek.

Rip currents can flow away from the beach at 5 mph, which Dusek acknowledges "doesn't sound like much," but "it's basically top-end Olympic swimmer speed." Can meteorologists forecast rip currents? "All it takes is for someone to get pulled from where they can touch bottom to where they can't." "You don't need a long rip for people to have problems," Dusek said. They're usually no more than a couple hundred feet long, but Dusek says some can extend a quarter-mile from shore. Rip currents typically extend from near the shoreline through the surf zone and past the line of breaking waves, according to NOAA.

Rip currents can be as narrow as 10 or 20 feet, but some can be 100 yards wide, according to Greg Dusek, a senior scientist for NOAA who studies rip currents. Those rip currents can run for a few minutes or for hours. Those rip currents remain in one place and are typically permanent, but the rip currents that may be the most confounding for swimmers and lifeguards are the ones that form sporadically along beaches due to a combination of factors such as waves, tide and the shape of the bottom. Structures such as jetties or piers can create rip currents as the water recedes along the solid fixture. They're often created when waves hit the shore and then a large volume of water recedes back out into the ocean through a narrow channel that's typically deeper than the surrounding bottom. Rip currents are powerful currents of water that move away from shore at surf beaches, according to NOAA. 'Such a good boy': Somerset 9-year-old who drowned is remembered for acts of kindness What are rip currents? 'The water was moving so fast': A Father's Day tragedy in Warwick But beachgoers can increase their chances of staying safe thanks to improvements in forecasting, by taking precautions and by knowing what to do if they get caught in a rip. With thousands of people heading for the beach this summer and the ocean relentlessly pounding the shoreline, rip currents will continue to emerge from the depths and pull swimmers from the shallows. Rip currents have been blamed for at least four deaths in Rhode Island over the last three years: a Massachusetts man who went swimming in heavy surf at Scarborough after the beach had closed on a night in July 2020, a 10-year-old Providence girl and 35-year-old Central Falls man who tried to save her at Warwick's Conimicut Point in June 2021, and a 9-year-old boy who died off Easton's Beach in Newport last July. More: RI is offering a cash bonus to attract summer lifeguards. Rhode Island Beach Guide: Everything you need to know about the best beaches in RI "Most of the time, it is a rip," he said. A captain at Scarborough, Lavallee has lost count of how many rescues he's made over the 14 years he's worked for the DEM. Lifeguards at Scarborough and Matunuck made about 100 rescues last summer, most of them the result of the powerful currents, Healey said.
