Escaping Hermine no reason for complacency

Hurricane Hermine continues to meander in lazy, late summer style well off the Atlantic coast, hundreds of miles from the beaches and bays forecasters warned would bear the brunt of her fury.

Instead of a predicted downpour Sunday, Delaware beaches were drenched in unrelenting sunshine and blue skies.
Visitors who had been lamenting the weather and their luck quickly poured onto Rehoboth’s Boardwalk to enjoy the spectacular weather.

While forecasters on the beach in Rehoboth talked about the weather false alarm of the year, children played along the water’s edge. Sunday looked like an ordinary beach day, except that the ocean was closed for swimming.

It’s not a popular decision to prohibit swimming on Labor Day weekend, the last big event of the summer the weekend visitors and residents alike look forward to, although for opposite reasons.

Although the skies had cleared, beach patrols in Rehoboth and Dewey raised the no-swimming flags because treacherous surf and powerful rip currents remained – conditions that make it impossible to ensure the safety of people in the water. On Sunday, Rehoboth guards allowed wading – but only what they called toe-deep.

Even with swimming prohibited, lifeguards remained on high alert. When a toddler on the sand tumbled into a receding wave, a guard sprang into action, sprinting down the beach before the child’s family member had even noticed she was in the water.

It may have been a day of minor rescues, but that doesn’t diminish the scale of tragedies averted.

If there is a message in this end-of-summer weekend, let it not be that we should ignore weather warnings; let it not be that hurricanes are never as dangerous as predicted.

The message of this weekend should be that despite data and models and years of practice, hurricanes remain extremely difficult to predict, and the ocean that drew most of us to the Cape Region deserves our deep, abiding respect.