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  • 17 minutes ago
As Tropical Storm Bertha continues to barrel across the U.S. Gulf Coast, AccuWeather's Anna Azallion shares important tips on the dangers of rip currents and storm surge produced by the storm.
Transcript
00:00Rip currents, that's something that's going to remain even into tomorrow as we're not talking about the landfall of Bertha
00:08and things like that.
00:09So anyone heading to the beach, especially people who maybe are at new beaches you're not familiar with, rip currents.
00:15It's a strong current of water moving away from the shore that you can get caught in.
00:19And key to remember, the escape route, it's parallel to the coast.
00:23So a little bit more about what to do if you do get caught in a rip current.
00:26Of course, the best way to go about things is to just not get in the water when there is
00:31that rip current risk.
00:32But I know things happen.
00:34So first, stay calm.
00:36Don't panic.
00:36That just makes things worse.
00:38You don't want to swim against the current either.
00:40Like I just showed you, you want to swim parallel to the coast as we work to escape that rip
00:47current.
00:48Now, if you can't escape, float or calmly try to tread water.
00:52And if you need help, make sure you're yelling, waving for any kind of assistance.
00:57Now, the other impact that we've seen is storm surge.
01:00The rip current is going to last longer than the storm surge.
01:02But a reminder of what this is, it's the abnormal rise of water over predicted tide levels.
01:08So that's how we measure storm surge.
01:10What was the predicted tide level and how much higher is the water?
01:13Now, when it's a pretty weak storm, it doesn't go much beyond just the beach.
01:18But when it's a little bit stronger, it can go a little bit further inland.
01:21We've seen that in some areas of Louisiana, for example.
01:24But part of that is just because of the coastline and because of how some of the waterways are connected
01:28to the gulf.
01:29So obviously, we've seen the flooding.
01:32But beach erosion is a big problem as well.
01:34Coastal erosion.
01:35We can see power outages and even loss of life is possible when we're talking about storm surge like this.
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