Coastal Hazards

Hurricane Isabel makes landfall on the Atlantic coast. (MODIS Rapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC)

Living along the coast is a joy, but it also brings risks. Erosion can claim front yards and even houses. Powerful storms can damage dwellings or flood low-lying areas with high tides and wind-driven waves. Poor planning can put houses and businesses in harm's way.

Hurricanes may pose the most dramatic threat, but other long-term issues like climate change and sea level rise also put coastal dwellers at risk. In order to use the destructive power of Hurricane Isabel as an opportunity for learning, Maryland Sea Grant joined with the Maryland Coastal Zone Management Program to produce four outdoor education panels that describe the arrival of Hurricane Isabel in September 2003 in different parts of the state. The panels present eyewitness accounts, while offering additional information about shoreline erosion, runoff from impervious surfaces, climate change and sea level rise.

These four education panels won a 2006 Apex Grand Award for writing and design.

	Annapolis: waters rose into shops and restaurants fronting the harbor, and wind-driven waves smashed into the Annapolis Maritime Museum Read what eyewitness Jeff Holland has to say about the night the wind arrived. Download PDF
	Baltimore: all night long they heard the sickening sound of car alarms and then the muffled sound of car horns underwater. Read what happened when harbor waters rose over Henderson's Wharf. Download PDF
	Solomons Island: Isabel's winds and waves struck yet another blow to nearby Calvert Cliffs. Read what one cliff-dweller says, as her house inches ever closer to the edge. Download PDF
	St. Michaels: the historic Hooper Strait lighthouse went to sea once more as waves washed over the grounds of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum. Read Judge North's description of how high the storm tide rose, and what happened to his piers. Download PDF

Breaking the Grip of Rip Currents:

A Public Education Campaign

Every year, lifeguards in the U.S. rescue tens of thousands of people from rip currents. Despite these rescues, some experts estimate that every year 100 people drown in these violent flows. Rip currents form when waves and water pile up near the beach and suddenly seek a way back out to sea, forming rough plumes and taking swimmers for a wild ride. If swimmers panic and try to swim back toward shore against the current, they may become fatigued and overwhelmed. Rip currents can travel up to eight feet per second, faster than even Olympic champions can swim.

Starting in 2006, beachgoers in Ocean City and Assateague Island began to see a new warning about rip currents. A total of 130 new metal signs, 115 at Ocean City and 15 at Assateague, show swimmers how to escape the dangerous grip of rip currents.

According to Tom Lott of the U.S. Lifesaving Association in Ocean City, who helped to get these warnings placed at access points, "These signs will definitely save some lives."

The rip current signs in Ocean City and Assateague were provided by Maryland Sea Grant, as part of a nationwide public information campaign spearheaded by the U.S. Lifesaving Association and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The rip current signs carry a number of helpful messages, but most important of all is the simple graphic that shows green arrows pointing a swimmer toward the edges of the rip current. The picture quickly communicates the message of swimming out and to the side -- and not against the current.

More about the signs, along with other valuable information, can be found on the web at: http://www.ripcurrents.noaa.gov

Download a pdf of the rip current sign

Download a pdf of the bilingual version

Working with funds from Maryland Sea Grant, researcher Tony Dalrymple has modeled the various ways in which rip currents take shape. Dalrymple, a civil engineer at the Johns Hopkins University, mounted a camera on the Stowaway Grand Hotel in Ocean City so he can observe rip currents as they happen. He and graduate student Varjola Nelko watch these currents form all year long. Images from this stretch of Ocean City shoreline are updated hourly and mounted online at: http://www.ce.jhu.edu/oceancity/

Dalrymple's goal is to provide a practical tool that will help lifeguards and others better predict when rip currents are likely to strike.

Useful Links

Fact sheets and coastal hazard materials from the Sea Grant network
http://www.haznet.org/haz_outreach/outreach_factsheets.htm

Keeping Swimmers Safe
Chesapeake Quarterly, Volume 8, Number 3, 2009

Global Warming and the Bay
Chesapeake Quarterly, Volume 5, Number 3, 2006

Sea Level Rise