MAINE SUNDAY TELEGRAM • July 21, 2024
Lifeguards at some of Maine’s most popular swimming beaches are reporting unexpected fallout from the series of high-water storms that battered the state’s shoreline last winter: More swimmers are being pulled into rip currents and need to be rescued. The high winds, high tides and high waves that destroyed fishing docks and coastal roads from Kittery to Cutler also reshaped the surf zone, dumping sand scoured from dunes and beaches out beyond the low-tide mark to create a new system of largely invisible underwater troughs and sandbars. As of Thursday, lifeguards have rescued 39 distressed swimmers from Old Orchard Beach rip currents this summer, and the tourist season has only just begun. Rip currents account for about 80% of the 60,000 rescues conducted each year at U.S. beaches.