Do Great Lakes have rip tides?

The Great Lakes may not have tides, but they can still experience strong currents. Terms like “rip currents,” “rip tides,” and “undertows” are often used to describe different types of hazards in the Great Lakes. However, the most accurate term for them is “dangerous currents.”



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Most Dangerous Currents at Lake Michigan These typically come from swimming at a beach with sandbars, which are a common feature around Lake Michigan. Rip currents are a constant danger in any sufficiently large body of water.

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Due to lakebed variations, waves may break strongly in some locations and weakly in others causing the water to converge in narrow, river-like currents moving away from shore. These are known as rip currents and can occur at any beach with breaking waves.

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Rip currents are powerful, channeled currents of water flowing away from shore. They typically extend from the shoreline, through the surf zone, and past the line of breaking waves. Rip currents can occur at any beach with breaking waves, including the Great Lakes.

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According to the National Weather Service (NWS) Great Lakes Current Incident Database (GLCID), the Great Lakes averages around 12 drowning fatalities per year related to dangerous currents.

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Hanakapiai Beach, Hawaii - Powerful Rip Currents Nestled in the Napali Coast of Kauai and only accessible by the Kalalau Trail, Hanakapiai Beach is one of the most dangerous places in the world to go swimming due to powerful rip currents and waves that are known to sweep people out to sea.

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The Great Lakes are more than capable of generating waves over 10 feet high, despite being smaller than our oceans. This lack in size actually increases the danger over the water. This is because the wave period in the Great Lakes (the time between two wave crests) is much shorter than in the ocean.

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“The waves hit you every three to five seconds in the Great Lakes, where in the ocean it might be 10 to 12 seconds between waves,” said Guy Meadows, a Michigan senior research scientist.

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Of all of the Great Lakes, Lake Erie had become predominantly polluted by the 1960s, largely due to the heavy industrial presence along its shores. With 11.6 million people living in its basin, and with big cities and sprawling farmland dominating its watershed, Lake Erie is severely impacted by human activities.

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