Bay Area beaches — which have never been the safest — are a little more dangerous this week, the US Coast Guard says.
As the Chron reports, the tail end of Hurricane Odile, which has caused impressive damage to and prompted evacuations from the Baja California peninsula, will be causing riptides and stronger currents than boaters or beachgoers might expect along the NorCal coast.
According to the Coast Guard, the most dangerous areas are south and southwest-facing beaches in Marin and Santa Cruz counties, but anywhere with jetties, piers, and inlets is especially treacherous, they say.
Find yourself caught in a riptide (no, not the bar)? The Coast Guard confirms what the Internet suggests: try to keep your feet on the ground (if you can), stay calm, call for help, and swim parallel to shore to extricate yourself from the current. Once you're out of the riptide (they're usually only 100-150 feet wide) then swim diagonally towards shore, to avoid getting caught in it again.
A safer alternative: stay at home and have your riptide experience care of the 1983-1986 series by the same name. So many good things here! The robot, the exercise thing, Joe Penny's shorts...
