Beachgoers warned on dangerous currents

It’s been a winter of great surfing at Southern California’s beaches. And this weekend is expected to offer more big waves — as well as dangerous rip currents.

The high surf, combined with runoff from storm drains going into the ocean, has dug trenches and holes and otherwise changed the topography of the sand just offshore.

The result: Rip currents galore.

“This is a spring delight for surfers, and a spring fright for almost everyone else because of the rip currents,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a sometime surfer.

Expert surfers and skilled swimmers sometimes use the powerful currents to hitch a ride to the next good wave, Patzert explained.

But for the vast majority of swimmers, and many surfers, a strong rip current will only provoke panic. Instead of swimming parallel to shore, which is what a swimmer caught in one of these currents should do, many will fruitlessly try to swim against it.

Rip currents “can be very dangerous. It all comes down to a person’s swimming ability and comfort level in the ocean,” said Patrick Jones, a captain for the Los Angeles County Fire Department’s lifeguard division in Hermosa Beach. At some beaches, he said, rip currents can pull a swimmer up to 400 yards from the beach.

That’s when lifeguards have to use Jet Skis or other watercraft to retrieve swimmers in trouble, Jones said.

Rip currents are often visible from the beach, he said. Ocean water is usually a bluish-green, but when rip currents form, the color changes to a light green and then to a light brown from all the sand being moved around, Jones said. That’s something lifeguards watch for, he said.

Along many of Los Angeles and Ventura County beaches, weather forecasters expect surf of up to 6 or 7 feet, though beginning Saturday they should be decreasing. But the rip current danger should persist, said Bill Hoffer, a weather specialist for the National Weather Service in Oxnard.

Along with relatively high surf and rip currents in the ocean, Southern California should expect strong winds throughout much of the region, but especially in canyons, passes and mountain areas, he said. In some places, gusts of up to 50 mph are expected, he said.

hector.becerra@latimes.com