08/25/2026
A rip current will not pull you under. It pulls you out. Knowing that difference is most of what keeps people alive out there. 🏊
A rip forms when water that waves have piled up against the shore finds a way back out, usually through a break in a sandbar or alongside something solid like a pier or a jetty. All that water funnels into a narrow lane and runs seaward fast.
The tell is usually a stretch of water that looks calmer and darker than everything around it. A gap in the line of breaking waves. Choppy churning water in a narrow channel. A trail of foam, seaweed or debris moving steadily away from the beach. The safest looking water on the beach is very often the rip.
If it has you, the rule is simple and it is the opposite of what your body wants to do. Do not swim straight back at the beach. You will lose. Swim parallel to the shore until you are out of the lane, then angle in. If you cannot get out, stop fighting, float, tread water, and wave and yell.
If somebody else is caught, do not go in after them. That is how the second drowning happens. Throw something that floats and get a lifeguard. 🚩
The flags on Alabama beaches are not decoration. Green is low hazard. Yellow is medium, moderate surf or currents. Red is high hazard. Double red means the water is closed, and it is illegal to enter the Gulf inside the Gulf Shores or Orange Beach city limits when two red flags are flying. Purple flies alongside the others and means dangerous marine life, jellyfish or rays.
Surf conditions before you go: Gulf Shores 251-968-8433, Orange Beach 251-981-7873. Text ALBEACHES to 888777 for daily updates.
Nationally most surf zone victims are male and between 10 and 29, and most of it happens in June and July. Baldwin County lost five people in 2021, its worst year since 2017.
Check the flags. Swim parallel.
