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Oswego, NY, May 21, 2024 - Who’s ready for some sand and sun? New York's Great Lakes and marine waters are beautiful and can be relaxing. But, those same waters can also be powerful and dangerous.
Before you head to the beach, know what the weather and wave forecasts are so you can be prepared. Also, remember to do the following:
• Pack sunscreen
• Grab your lifejackets (or buy some if you don’t have any!)
• Decide who the Water Watcher will be for your children
• Visit www.weather.gov/safety/beachhazards and weather.gov/greatlakes/beachhazards for swim & rip current risks
• New York Sea Grant also offers additional #BEachSAFEly tips at www.nyseagrant.org/beachsafely
The videos below, created by Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and its partners, focus on Lake Michigan. However, many of the lessons shared can be applied to the other Great Lakes, including Lakes Ontario and Erie, both of which have shorelines in upstate New York. In addition to the tips cited above, you'll learn:
• How to survive several different types of currents — On average, there are 87 drownings in the Great Lakes each year.
• Why waves and currents in the Great Lakes can be more dangerous than ocean waves
• Why just knowing how to swim doesn’t mean you’re safe in the water
• How wearing a life jacket can provide you with a 99% chance of survival in the waters of the Great Lakes
• How knowing to stay safe near the water is critical, not only in summer but in winter too.
For more, check out each of the videos below, along with their respective transcripts.
Water Safety — What to Know Before You Go to the Beach
Transcript:
The scariest calls? I would have to say missing children last seen in the water or last seen on the beach. One particular call, a little girl asked "is my daddy going to be okay?" It's hard to answer those questions 'cause you don't know and a lot of times they don't make it. It's probably one of the rougher things about the job.
On average every year, 87 people die in the Great Lakes, half of them here in Lake Michigan.
We are talking about the Great Lakes.
We have hundreds of miles of prized shoreline. Typically, it is beautiful and serene, but at times Lake Michigan and the surrounding Great Lakes can get furious and volatile.
There's a huge difference between ocean waves and Great Lakes waves.
Ocean waves may be created by a big storm that's 2- or 3,000 miles offshore, but on the Great Lakes it's wind on the water now which is making all of the wave activity.
When we get winds out of the North, that can drastically change wave heights, and that can change quickly.
Check the National Weather Service forecast before you leave to drive down to the beach for the day. When you get to the beach, make sure that you check with any lifeguards and look for any flag conditions or signage that might indicate any hazards are present.
When you're going to visit, you need to think about your safety plan because not every beach has a lifeguard, so you need to be in charge of your safety, especially for your children. And most importantly, know before you go, look at that forecast, know what to expect when you're heading to the beach or the lake.
We know that a lot of our visitors are drawn to our beaches. We want to make sure that our visitors can be safe and have fun.
Water Safety — How to Escape Dangerous Currents
Transcript:
Lake Michigan is freshwater. This is so different from an ocean. We don't have the salt, so we're lacking that buoyancy already, so if waves get super high and rip currents start to form and that water gets volatile, if you start struggling when you're swimming, it's going to be so much harder to get out of that situation.
In the ocean, you could have 15 seconds between the crest of a wave and the crest of the next wave, but on the Great Lakes you might have a swell period of 3 seconds to the crest of one wave, 3 seconds to the crest of the next wave, and 3 seconds to the crest of the next wave.
We call this a high frequency wave. So in the ocean, 15 seconds you get hit with two waves, but in the Great Lakes you could get hit with five waves in the same time period.
The higher frequency can be very traumatic and it can cause very strong dangerous currents.
The current and wave combination on the Great Lakes can be deadly, but there are some tips that you can follow to keep yourself safe from dangerous currents when you're swimming in the Great Lakes. The first thing is to stay dry when waves are high as dangerous currents are more likely once waves get to around 3 feet. This may not seem very big, but it's often the time most people get into trouble because the currents can become active and it doesn't look like the waves are that big, and so it doesn't look very threatening, but actually about 80% of our incidents happen when those conditions are present.
It really can be difficult when you're out there trying to swim against the strong powerful water energy of Lake Michigan.
There are several different types of currents that can cause a swimmer trouble on the Great Lakes. Rip currents are responsible for around 40% of the drownings on the Great Lakes. A rip current can be tricky to identify even for the experts. Oftentimes, it looks like a calm spot in between breaking waves, and people put their kids right into the current or walk right into it because they think it's safer than swimming in the waves.
If you get caught in a rip current — flip, float, and follow. You're going to want to flip on your back, let that water take you back, float backwards, and then follow, which means you're going to want to swim parallel to the shore out of that current, and then you can easily swim back to the shore and save some of your energy that way because you weren't fighting that strong current.
Longshore currents are currents that flow parallel to the shore. If you're caught in a longshore current, you'll notice that you're floating along the beach. Swim back to the beach to get out of the current, but make sure it doesn't carry you down the beach too far.
One good tip is to keep an eye on your belongings, this will help to know if you're drifting towards a pier or break wall where the longshore current can sometimes take you.
A structural current is a current that forms right next to a pier or break wall, and this happens when the longshore current which flows parallel to the beach intersects that pier or structure and goes out into the lake. The water has nowhere to go, so if you're jumping off the pier you could be jumping right into one of those currents.
Outlet currents form near river mouths or stream outlets, and it can be enhanced just like a rip current channel can when there are larger waves coming in at a direct angle, so we recommend that you don't swim near river outlets because the water can pull you out just like you're in a rip current.
Channel currents form in areas that are connected by a sandbar, so the shore will have a sandbar going out to maybe a set of rocks or an island. Oftentimes, people are walking out on a sandbar and get caught and pushed off the sandbar from that current, which is moving parallel to the beach. If you get pushed off a sandbar, don't panic — flip on your back, float, and follow the current until it's safe to get out of the water. To avoid getting caught in a dangerous current we should avoid swimming in places that they commonly form.
Water Safety — The Basics
Transcript:
Most people have this false sense of security that knowing how to swim is water safety, when simply put knowing how to swim is just knowing how to swim. Water safety is knowing what can cause hazards, what types of water bodies have hazards, and how to avoid or survive those hazards. So we need people to understand their true swimming ability.
On average in the Great Lakes, there's 87 drownings a year. Half of those drownings are just here in Lake Michigan.
Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death in children ages 1 to 4. That's why it's really important for parents to watch the water at all times, even when lifeguards are present.
If the weather's really nice it gets quite busy, so it is a little overwhelming when there are hundreds of people in the water and it's only two of us on stand and one lifeguard on break.
Whenever you go to the beach, you need to know that you may be on your own if there's a water emergency. If you are swimming at a beach that doesn't have lifeguards, we recommend that you bring U.S. Coast Guard approved properly fitted life jackets, not just for the children but also for the adults. If there's an emergency, if you have a life jacket on, you have a 99% survival rate in the Great Lakes.
Lifeguards can't be watching your children 100% of the time, so it's really important to designate someone as a water watcher, and a water watcher is a person who is dedicated to watching the water only — they don't have a phone, they don't have a book, they aren't talking to other adults, their only job is to watch the water. This way, you can catch something happening before it's too late because drowning is quick and it's silent and it can happen in an instant.
Drowning has been portrayed as lots of yelling and waving at the surface of the water, when in fact a drowning person cannot yell or wave for help. So a drowning person is just gasping for air just at the surface, it looks like they're treading water. If they're doing this, they will submerge in less than 1 minute. If we can get them out of the water and breathing in less than 2 minutes, it's about a 94% survival rate.
Lake Michigan can be a very dangerous lake. We want people to come enjoy, have fun, but we also want people to go home safe and together.
Water Safety — Winter Beach Hazards
Transcript:
Water safety is so important during the winter. When when we go in and out of ice that's forming on Lake Michigan, you really need to pay attention to the forecast because we'll go through periods of very cold weather and then gradual warming that will help thin and melt that ice, so you never know exactly how thick that ice shelf is.
When waves push ice and water up over the snow mounds, it creates shelf ice. This looks stable, but it has caverns underneath that a person could fall into and not be able to escape. During the winter when there's snow or ice, you can't tell where the water line begins. If you walk or drive a snowmobile on snow or ice on the beach, you don't know how thick the ice is and could fall through into the freezing water.
What can happen once we get some warmer temperatures to move in during the winter, some of that ice underneath that initial top layer will start to melt, and you can fall through that ice and it is so dangerous. A person that falls through icy water conditions only has about 3 minutes to get out for that survival time.
What we ask is that if you are out there enjoying the the beach in the winter that you stay off the ice. If you have to be on the ice, wear a life jacket.
More Info: New York Sea Grant
New York Sea Grant (NYSG), a cooperative program of Cornell University
and the State University of New York (SUNY), is one of 34 university-based
programs under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s
National Sea Grant College Program.
Since 1971, NYSG has represented a statewide network of integrated
research, education and extension services promoting coastal community
economic vitality, environmental sustainability and citizen awareness
and understanding about the State’s marine and Great Lakes resources.
Through NYSG’s efforts, the combined talents of university scientists
and extension specialists help develop and transfer science-based
information to many coastal user groups—businesses and industries,
federal, state and local government decision-makers and agency managers,
educators, the media and the interested public.
The program maintains Great Lakes offices at Cornell University, SUNY
Buffalo, Rochester Institute of Technology, SUNY Oswego, the Wayne County Cooperative Extension office
in Newark, and in Watertown. In the State's marine waters, NYSG has offices at Stony Brook
University and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County on Long Island, in Queens, at Brooklyn College, with Cornell Cooperative
Extension in NYC, in Bronx, with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Ulster County in Kingston, and with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Westchester County in Elmsford.
For updates on Sea Grant activities: www.nyseagrant.org has Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and YouTube links. NYSG offers a free e-list sign up via www.nyseagrant.org/nycoastlines for its flagship publication, NY Coastlines/Currents, which is published quarterly.
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