April 2021 (ROTM#148) Pensacola Beach, Florida, USA

This is possibly the best rip current photo I've seen. It was taken from a drone by Taylor Busbee (@coastal.locals on Instagram) and it shows rip current after rip current stacked up along the entire beach in Pensacola Beach, Florida. The rip currents are the dark green gaps which are deeper channels running offshore. A coastal geomorphologist would call this a classic 'transverse bar and rip beach' whereas a lifeguard would see as a very dangerous beach. And it is. LIfeguards did 93 rescues along the beach the weekend before this picture was taken. Pensacola Beach is located along the Florida Panhandle in the Gulf of Mexico and that entire stretch of sandy beaches is notorious for rip currents.

You can clearly see a feature called the 'rip head bar' at the end of each rip current. This rhythmic sand bar denotes the end of rip flow where the sand that the rip is carrying get deposited. You can also see that the shoreline where the rips are is embayed. These rip embayments indicate that the rips have been in the same location for a while and have eroded the beach.

It's also obvious that the rips are fairly regularly spaced along the beach, which is not uncommon when transverse bar and rip conditions occur. These rips look to be about 25-50 m apart and each is about 5-10 m wide, which doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room to find a safe place to swim!

Best rip current picture ever.