We developed our rip current warning system in-house as a way to help keep visitors to our beach safe and aware of the dangers presented by rip currents. We do this by displaying the current rip warning level on every page of our website, having signs at each beach access with a QR code that can be scanned which brings them to a page on our website, and by using social media liberally throughout the summer months to keep the awareness level high.
To determine the rip risk level, we developed a web service that interfaces with the National Weather Service and generates the flag images you see throughout our website. This same service can also provide a text-based risk level (Low, Moderate, High, OfflineForSeason, etc.) which is used when there is a need to determine the risk, but displaying an image is not appropriate. The generated images can also provide additional warnings, such as dangerous marine life (purple flag), or when the beach is closed.
While we developed this system for ourselves, we designed it to be easily extended to support other beaches. If your beach or community would like to interface with our system, please contact Todd Osborne at [email protected], or our Chief via email to [email protected]. Once configured by us, adding the display of warning flags to your website is as simple as a standard <img> element in your HTML code.
