Earl has local surf churning

FOLLY BEACH -- Mike Hamblin came out of the surf at the pier Tuesday with a big grin. Yeah, he could feel the rip.

"Feels like someone grabbing your ankle and dragging you away," he said. Told that the current would pull twice as hard today because the breakers would be head high, Hamblin just nodded. He's on vacation from Fort Wayne. "I'm anxious for that, dude. Coming from Indiana, we don't get that kind of stuff."

The lifeguards at the Folly pier won't be so delighted. It's nearing the Labor Day holiday, the last big beach crowd weekend. Big surf means big trouble for bathers, and powerful Hurricane Earl is expected to churn up swells 6 to 8 feet high or larger as it passes 300 miles east of Charleston on Thursday. With the waves comes a strong pull in the current that runs along the beach and a real threat of rip currents dragging swimmers out to sea.

The National Weather Service, Charleston, is forecasting a high risk of dangerous rips.

The surf and the rips from Earl will begin to ease into the weekend, just in time for Tropical Storm Fiona to pass offshore, bringing in another round of surf and rips. Behind Fiona, a third tropical system is taking shape in the far Atlantic.

Late Tuesday, Earl steamed across the Caribbean with winds of 135 mph. It already had begun the predicted "recurve" away from the Southeast curve. The Category 4 hurricane is expected to be just as strong when it spins by Charleston on Thursday afternoon. The Lowcountry, though, won't notice much inland. It will be breezy, and the surf will be rough.

"For experienced surfers, it's going to be fun," said meteorologist Steve Rowley, with the weather service. "Aside from that, people probably need to stay out of the water."

At Charleston County Park and Recreation Commission beaches, lifeguards will watch for streaks of foam moving straight out, clouded water columns or chop in otherwise smooth, rolling waves. They'll be whistling bathers back to chest-high water, then to waist-high, depending on the height of the waves.

The threat of rip currents, or narrow channels of receding water that will pull ocean swimmers out from the beach, is expected to be twice what the beaches saw this past weekend as Hurricane Danielle passed offshore. At the Folly Beach fishing pier alone, more than a dozen people had to be helped out of strong rips in a two-hour span on Saturday afternoon.

"Rip is the number one thing we'll be looking for," said Steve Fernandez, park and recreation assistant safety program manager. "If the surf gets 'gi-normous,' we can close the water."

Along the offshore fishing reefs, swells are expected to be 15-16 feet high and winds 30 mph or stronger.

Earl threatens to sideswipe the mid-Atlantic coast early Friday, and forecasters on Tuesday issued tropical storm and hurricane watches for Surf City, N.C., and beaches to its north.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency warned people along the Eastern Seaboard to prepare for possible evacuations.

North Carolina officials announced the first evacuation would be Ocracoke Island beginning at 5 a.m. today. Tourists would be ordered to leave the barrier island accessible only by ferries, but those who live there year-round have the option to stay.

"There is still concern" for landfalls from Cape Hatteras north, Bill Read, National Hurricane Center director, said Tuesday.

Fiona is expected to pass farther east of Charleston on Friday with winds barely at the 40 mph tropical-storm strength.

"But the meat of the Labor Day weekend things are going to be improving for sure," Rowley said.