July 2017 (ROTM#103) Thorsminde Strand, Denmark

You might not associate Denmark with beaches, but it may surprise you to know that there are plenty of beautiful beaches that are popular for bathing in the summertime. Many of these beaches, particularly on the North Sea Coast, have sandbars and experience breaking waves and that is basically the formula for the formation of rip currents.

Erik Bech is the General Manager for Water Safety of Surf Lifesaving Denmark and he sent me a bunch of pictures of rip currents along Thorsminde Strand (on the North Sea coast). I like this one because it shows that rip currents don’t have to be big, or flow huge distances offshore to be dangerous. Sometimes they just form a gap in the sand bar, but that flow is enough to take you into deeper water, even if it’s only 10 or 20 m from the shoreline. This rip current can be identified by two alongshore feeders, occupying a deeper trough, that feed into a skewed rip-neck channel between the sandbars. It’s only a few metres wide! You can see the different texture of the surface water of the rip as it flows about 5 metres seaward of the gap before stopping.

What would be a good message on this beach? As you walk along the beach, avoid the gaps in the sand bars!

Denmark has nice beaches…and rips