Kind of rips
Kind of rips
A: At a coast without obstacles: a flat coast
The fixed rip
Fixed rips can perpendicular to the banks or oblique. The shape may change due to the tidal currents or winds parallel to the coast. In fact, there is no fixed pattern for. Fixed rips are usually on a fixed place but may slowly change from place and shape. The fixed rip is usually situated in a bar or on the beach where the trogue floats empty into the sea at low tide. We can categorize them as follows:
Remark: The depth of a rip is the difference in height of the highest pont of the surrounding bar and the deepest ppoint of the rip.
Size: Big, witdh>15 meter and deeper than 1 meter
Small: Not deeper than 1 m and smaller than 15 meter
Very small: Smaller than 5 meter and deep between 50-100 cm
Baby or mini rip: Smaller than 2 meter and deep about 50-75 cm mostly on the beach area.
To illustrate, here are some photos submitted by RWS-RIKZ/AGI: the picture below shows a large fixed rip see in the 1st bar. (the red arrow) It is a perpendicular rip. On the beach the bar is dry on some spots and there are some minor rips in, where the bar is narrower. (Blue lines)
See the Utube movie of a mini or baby rip.
On the video is a recording of a very small rip on the beach. The bar is still swamped by a wave and fills the trough. Also the water level is lowering because it is ebb. The excess water in the trough finds its way back to sea. The rip was about 50-80 cm deep. An adult could stand up but a child would fall over and float towards the sea. The trunk out there was within tens of seconds into the sea.
Shape:
- perpendicular to coast
- diagonally across the bar, to the left or right,
- S-shape
Location:
Rips can in every bar. Usually we are dealing with beach and the 1st bar. Rips on the beach behave differently than in the 1st bar. The rips which become dry at low tide, have a different flow behavior than rips in the 1st bar. The next picture shows a rip at the beach or beachbar.
B. Rips at groins and jetties
The permanent rip
Rips at groins, jetties or harbor peers form an additional danger due to the presence of the concrete objects. The rips are usually located on both sides of the obstacle. These rips are not created by the waves soil and current but arise because humans made a permanent obstacle in the coast. These rips are so forced to be on a permanent place.
C. Very small rips on the beach: the baby or mini rip
On the beach there are often small troughs neat to find, at high tide they are filled and at low tide they are empty. The current which flows from this rip to the sea is called a baby- or minirip. Usually we can easy walk through here. The current ends in the waves and stops there. Special for smaller children these rips are dangerous. See slideshow in the link before.
D. Short rip currents: the Flash rip
At very high surf and strong sea there are chances that spontaneously on any spot a sudden flow through the surf back to sea can occur. This sudden flow is usually short and takes several minutes. The effect is no less.. Because this is difficult to predict where this occurs and also the moment this is usually the time when the red flag goes up. Forbidden to swim. How unpredictable the sea can be shows above picture of 17 May 2005. No high waves and no explanation why suddenly this flash-rip arose. So you can see that the sea is often unpredictable.
