August 2016 (ROTM#92) Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

In the spirit of the Olympic games, one of the most famous beaches in the world, Copacabana Beach gets the nod this month. There's a lot of things being talked about with regards to the Olympics, but I'm not sure rip currents is one of them, but perhaps they should be, especially with so many visitors to Brazil heading for the beach. Brazil has a very long surf coast with plenty of great beaches, surf spots and of course, rip currents. Beach drowning numbers in Brazil are extremely high despite the efforts of lifeguards and most of these drownings are due to rips. 

 Copacabana does not have as much surf as nearby beaches, such as Ipanema to the south, as it lies in a somewhat protected embayment. Nevertheless, when there's waves, there's rips and a search through the archived images on Google Earth shows that yep, Copacabana gets rips too. 

If you look closely at the top image, in the middle of the beach there are two narrow darker bands heading offshore. These are pretty much opposite the 6th and 12th boardwalks coming down the beach (counting from the left). These rip channels are not particularly big, but they don't have to be. The image on the bottom is towards the northern end of the beach and shows some crazy circulation patterns heading offshore and curling around. These are very different rips as they are not channelised and instead are driven by the combination of breaking wave action and backwash off the beach.

See any rips?

Swirls look complicated