Do the Great Lakes have rip currents?

Yes. The Great Lakes produce rip currents, structural currents along piers and breakwalls, channel currents at river mouths, and longshore currents. Lake Michigan generates the most drownings of any of the lakes, largely because of its size, its north-south fetch, and how many people swim it. Fresh water is no safer than salt in this respect.

How do you escape a rip current in the Great Lakes?

Do not fight it toward shore. Flip onto your back, float to keep your head above water and get your breathing under control, and follow the safest path out — swim parallel to the beach until you are out of the pull, then angle in. The National Weather Service teaches this as Flip, Float and Follow. If you cannot swim out, keep floating and wave and yell for help.

What is a structural current?

Water pushed along the shore by waves hits a pier, breakwall, or jetty and is forced offshore alongside it, forming a fast, narrow current running out along the structure. It is the most dangerous current type on the Great Lakes because piers look like the safest place to swim and are the opposite.

How do I know if it is dangerous to swim today?

Check the National Weather Service beach hazards forecast for your stretch of shoreline before you go. Onshore winds and waves of two feet or more sharply increase current risk. Beach flag systems at many parks reflect that forecast — a red flag means stay out of the water, and it means it.

Where to Swim: Great Lakes Beaches and the Currents Nobody Warns You About

The Great Lakes have the best freshwater beaches in the world and they drown people every summer. Both things are true, and the second one surprises visitors because the water is fresh, there is no surf culture, and most Great Lakes beaches have no lifeguard.

Read the current section of this guide before the beach section. It is the part that matters.

The four currents that hurt people

Rip currents. Waves push water toward the beach. That water has to return, and when it finds a low spot in a sandbar it concentrates into a narrow channel running straight out. That channel can move faster than most people can swim. Great Lakes rips are usually short — tens of yards, not hundreds — but they are strong enough that a swimmer fighting one straight back toward the beach exhausts themselves in under two minutes, and exhaustion is what kills.

Structural currents. Water moving along the shore hits a pier, jetty, or breakwall and is deflected offshore, running fast along the structure. These are the most lethal currents on the Great Lakes, because piers look like safety. Swimmers get pulled out along the concrete, then pushed against it by the waves. Never swim near a pier or breakwall, on either side, in any wave action.

Channel currents. At river mouths and harbor entrances, water moves through a narrow gap continuously and can run hard regardless of the waves. Harbor channels also carry boat traffic that cannot see or stop for a swimmer.

Longshore currents. Waves arriving at an angle push a river of water parallel to the beach. Longshore current is not directly deadly, but it carries people down the beach into piers and rip channels without them realizing they have moved 200 yards.

How to spot dangerous water before you get in

Stand on the beach for two full minutes and look. Signs a rip is running:

A gap in the breaking waves — a channel where waves are not breaking while they break on both sides of it.
A plume of sandy, discolored water moving straight offshore.
Foam, seaweed, or debris streaming steadily out past the surf line.
Choppy, disturbed water in an otherwise even wave field.

Signs the day itself is dangerous, regardless of what you can see:

Onshore wind. A wind blowing off the water toward the beach builds the wave energy that drives every current on this list.
Waves of two feet or more. On the Great Lakes that is enough.
A red flag on the beach, or a Beach Hazards Statement or High Swim Risk in the NWS forecast for that shoreline.

Check the forecast in the morning, not at the beach after the car is unpacked. NOAA issues beach hazard forecasts for Great Lakes shorelines specifically for this.

If you are caught in one

The National Weather Service teaches three words: Flip, Float, Follow.

Flip onto your back. This puts your face out of the water and stops the reflexive panic-swimming that drowns people.
Float. Get your breathing under control. A rip current pulls you out, not under. It will slow and release. Floating costs you almost no energy and buys you the time to think.
Follow the safest way out. Once the pull eases, swim parallel to the shore to get out of the narrow current channel, then angle back in at a diagonal. If you cannot swim, keep floating, wave one arm, and yell.

Do not swim straight at the beach against the current. That is the single decision that turns a scare into a fatality.

If someone else is in trouble: throw, don’t go. Untrained rescuers drown alongside the person they went in for, constantly. Call 911. Throw anything that floats — a ring buoy, a cooler, a boat cushion, an inflated float. Point at the person so responders can find them. Many Great Lakes beaches now have public rescue rings mounted on posts; know where the one at your beach is before you need it.

The limits of general advice

This guide describes patterns. Your beach on your day is specific. Sandbar shape changes after every storm, so the rip that ran off the third groin last August may not be there now. Local knowledge — a state park ranger, a beach patrol, a person who has swum there for twenty years — beats anything written down.

Two things generalize anyway: the Great Lakes are cold, and cold does its own killing. Superior rarely rises above the low 60s at the surface even in August, and an upwelling can drop any lake 20 degrees overnight. Cold water shock causes an involuntary gasp on immersion; if your head is under when it happens, that is the whole story. Enter cold water gradually. And most Great Lakes beaches have no lifeguard. Assume you are the safety system.

Beaches worth the drive

Sleeping Bear Dunes, Michigan (Lake Michigan). Perched dunes, clear water, and beaches at Glen Haven and Empire that look tropical in August. Big and exposed — check conditions.

Grand Haven State Park, Michigan (Lake Michigan). Wide, sandy, walkable to town, with the famous pier and its catwalk right there. That pier is also exactly what this guide warns about. Swim well down the beach from it.

Warren Dunes State Park, Michigan (Lake Michigan). Three miles of beach at the south end of the lake with Tower Hill behind it. Closest true dune beach to Chicago.

Indiana Dunes, Indiana (Lake Michigan). West Beach and Porter Beach, with the Chicago skyline across the water. West Beach is one of the few Great Lakes beaches with seasonal lifeguards.

Presque Isle State Park, Pennsylvania (Lake Erie). A sand peninsula with eleven guarded beaches — the largest lifeguarded operation on the Great Lakes — and Erie’s warm shallow water, which by August is genuinely comfortable.

Park Point, Duluth, Minnesota (Lake Superior). The longest freshwater baymouth bar in the world, seven miles of sand, and water cold enough to take your breath away in July. Go for the beach, not the swim.

Twelvemile Beach and Miners Beach, Michigan (Lake Superior). Inside Pictured Rocks. Clear to the point of looking fake, empty on a weekday, and cold.

Wasaga-style shallow bays on Lake Huron: on the American side, look at Port Crescent State Park and the beaches of the Thumb, where the water shelves out slowly and warms up.

Hamlin Beach and Fair Haven, New York (Lake Ontario). The quietest big-water swimming on the chain, and the warmest of the deep lakes by late August.

Pick the beach for the day’s wind. A west wind makes the Michigan shore rough and the Wisconsin shore flat; an east wind reverses it. That single habit will do more for your beach days than any list.