August 2011 (ROTM#32) Guincho Beach, Portugal

This picture was sent to me by Nicolas Bruneau, a rip current scientist who's based in Europe. The beach (Praia do Guincho) is located on Portugal's Estoril coast and is about 25 km west of Lisbon. The beach gets small swell and a lot of wind during the summer months making it popular for windsurfers and kitesurfers. Most of the good surf comes during winter. You can clearly see a few rips exposed at low tide. One is in the middle of the beach and is very narrow, heading out at an angle. The other is at the bottom of the picture adjacent to the rocks. Both look like deeper, darker channels. You often get rips occurring where there are rock outcrops along beaches as they tend to focus wave energy and tend to help scour out channels.

Rocks = rips