February 2018 (ROTM#110) Coogee Beach, Sydney, NSW, Australia

The hardest type of rip current to get a photo of are 'flash rips'. Flash rips are not your normal channelised rip current that flows through narrow and deep channels between sand bars or against headlands and structures. Nope, no channels involved. Flash rips also look different. They don't look like dark green gaps between the whitewater of breaking waves, instead they look like turbulent streaks of water and sand shooting offshore from the line of breaking waves. Like this one at Coogee Beach in Sydney. It's the narrow white area of turbulent water heading offshore in the middle of the picture. 

 When it comes to rips, I usually say 'white is nice, green is mean', but that doesn't apply to flash rips, in fact it's the opposite. Flash rips form on days when the waves are messy, stormy, or just big in general. A few large waves will break and the build-up of water will suddenly create a return flow of water....that's your flash rip. Often they don't start from the beach, but from the seaward edge of the sand bar, or surf zone. They don't last for long either, maybe a minute or so and can disappear and re-form somewhere else. They are extremely unpredictable and hard to see from the shoreline. There's actually a smaller flash rip at the bottom of the photo.

The good news is that they occur most often on days that are not really great for swimming and they don't flow particularly fast. The bad news is that they are still strong enough to take you offshore into deeper water. So don't go swimming on stormy, messy days!

Classic flash rip in the middle of the beach