Are rip currents more dangerous in South Carolina in the summer? What data shows
July has seen many single and double red flag warnings along the Myrtle Beach coastline indicating the presence of rip currents in the water.
On Sunday, the body of Chase Childers was recovered off of Pawleys Island. Childers died after trying to save four or five others who had been caught up in a rip current, according to Sun News reporting.
In a social media post on Monday, Pawleys Island mayor Brian Henry wrote that a rip current was the likely cause of the drowning.
Rip currents are a year round occurrence, there are just more swimmers in the water in the summer so more drownings tend to occur National Weather Service meteorologist Marc Bacon said.
“Nobody’s swimming in January, but the rip currents, they don’t care about that,” he said. “They’re still there’s just wind driven and go by long period swells and those two things don’t have seasonality, but swimming does.”
An ongoing list of U.S. surf zone fatalities for 2025 from the NWS shows 21 people have died because of rip currents so far this year. One of those recorded deaths one was a 23-year-old in Holden Beach, NC, about 50 miles north of Myrtle Beach.
A rip current happens when breaking waves are trying to pile up water onto the beach, but it’s unable to so the water is goes back taking the path of least resistance, Bacon said.
A common misnomer in rip current drownings is that people die or drown when the are pulled under the waves. In actuality, Bacon explained that rip currents don’t pull someone under the waves, but rather move them farther away from shore. Drownings typically happen when swimmers are too tired from fighting the current to continue swimming, he said.
The best way to escape a rip current is to swim parallel to the shore instead of towards it, Bacon confirmed. He also recommends never swimming out of sight of a lifeguard and never swimming alone.
In North Myrtle Beach, The Sun News has reported on two drownings in July. According to city spokesperson Lauren Jessie, last year North Myrtle Beach Ocean Rescue made 115 total rescues, 51 of which were rip current related. So far, in 2025, the city’s ocean rescue made 55 rescues, 21 of which were rip current related.
Since 2010, the NWS has recorded 877 rip current drowning deaths in the U.S. In Horry County, from 2010 through June 16, 2025 there have been 17 drownings due to rip currents, the NWS dataset showed.
This story was originally published July 16, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
