Date Published: July 5, 2006   

Radar monitors waves off South Carolina coast

The Associated Press

A new radar program scanning the ocean off South Carolina's Lowcountry could help find lost boaters, predict rip currents and help pinpoint forecasts for wave heights and storm surge during hurricanes.

An array of antennas has been placed on the beach at remote Pritchards Island near Beaufort. They beam high frequency signals all the way out to the continental shelf more than 130 miles offshore, covering the coast from Savannah, Ga., to Charleston.

"It creates a big map of the movement of the ocean," said Richard Styles, University of South Carolina physical oceanography professor. "You can see the currents get really fast at the edge of the Gulf Stream."

The new radar complements a series of fixed buoys, towers and platforms that now take measurements offshore.

The system is the second in the Southeast and first in South Carolina. It cost $180,000 and was paid for by a federal Naval Research office grant, said Styles, who hopes to get money for a second system to cover the state's northern coast.

The system has a number of uses, from finding lost boaters to figuring out how much the ocean will rise with a hurricane coming ashore.

The data also can be fed into computer models used to forecast rip currents, which are narrow, rushing runs in the retreating surf that can carry off even an experienced swimmer. The currents cause a number of drownings each year.

"Flash" rip currents, which start abruptly and last 15 to 30 minutes, are the hardest to predict, said meteorologist Pete Mohlin of the National Weather Service's Charleston office.

"The data would definitely be most useful, that's for sure," Mohlin said.

Styles said he is using the data to study how waves evolve as they move to shore.

"It's really state-of-the-art technology," said Madilyn Fletcher, director of the Carolinas Coastal Ocean Observation and Prediction System that operates some of the offshore equipment. "It's the future for being able to do offshore observation."

The information will be available to the public in a few months at the Southeast Atlantic Coastal Ocean Observing System Web site:.

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Information from: The Post and Courier,