April 2012 (ROTM#40) Palm Beach, Sydney, Australia

Another fantastic photo taken by Andre Slade from Oceanfit. Palm Beach is Sydney's northern most beach and is a sort of home to the rich and famous, but it's not immune to rips.The rip in this picture is that thin blue line extending out through the whitewater. It may not be very wide, but the water being squeezed between those sandbars can cause very high flow speeds. Most fixed rips (which this one is) flow about 0.5 m/s on average. To put that in perspective, you'd just be able to stand in waste deep water against a current that strong. I wouldn't be surprised if this one was much faster.

Palm Beach is famous in the rip current world. I did my PhD experiments there in 1994 in a rip almost exactly in the same spot shown in the picture. There was also a video camera installed in the lighthouse on top of Barrenjoey Headland at the north end of the beach which did all sorts of image analysis to understand the rip behaviour along the beach for about a 5 year period in the late 90's, early 00's. It's mostly famous though because it's where they film the popular Australian soap opera 'Home and Away'.

Palm Beach - did my PhD experiments here in 1994