It has been a hot summer and there's a good chance you might be taking a trip to the beach, whether that's the ocean, one of the Great Lakes, or a smaller body of water. So we've brought in ocean and coastal safety expert Bruckner Chase, who talks about how to stay safe while swimming in waves and water temperatures where hypothermia could become a concern — and it's not as cold as you might think. Chase works with lifeguards, government agencies, and organizations from all across the globe. He is the host of NOAA's Wave Safe video series and has been featured on the Weather Channel many times. We want to hear from you! Have a question for the meteorologists? Call 609-272-7099 and leave a message. You might hear your question and get an answer on a future episode! You can also email questions or comments to podcasts@lee.net. About the Across the Sky podcast The weekly weather podcast is hosted on a rotation by the Lee Weather team: Matt Holiner of Lee Enterprises' Midwest group in Chicago, Kirsten Lang of the Tulsa World in Oklahoma, Joe Martucci of the Press of Atlantic City, N.J., and Sean Sublette of the Richmond Times-Dispatch in Virginia. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Welcome, everybody to the Across the Sky podcast, our Lee Enterprises National Weather Podcast. I'm meteorologist Joe Martucci based at the Jersey Shore here. Summer, of course, in full swing, although fall is creeping around the corner. But we're talking about wave safety. We have Bruckner Chase. He is a coastal and ocean safety expert. I know him personally. He is fantastic. AC really loves his craft. But let me ask you guys, Sean and Matt, have you guys been to beaches here? You know, I have not been to the beach this year. I think I've told you all I'm saving my pennies and going to Italy in September. So I have not done the beach this year. But nonetheless, I do love the beach. I love the Outer Banks in North Carolina. And I really liked what Bruckner had to say about the differences between some of the hazards on the East Coast versus the West Coast, not having been really spent a lot of time at the West Coast beaches. It's nice to see this this broader, broader scope that he was able to do to bring us in on. And I have not made a beach trip either this summer. Of course, I am in Chicago now. We do have beaches in Chicago. There does lake beaches. And if you've never been on the Great Lakes, never been to Chicago, when you are standing on Lake Michigan, you think you're at the ocean or somebody just dropped you down, Maybe like I'm at the ocean, right on it. No, the lake is just that big. It is the ocean. You get wave action on it. So I have been to a Chicago Lake Beach, but not an ocean beach this summer. I've always been a little bit nervous. I got to be honest about going to the beach. And I feel like oftentimes I think, well, if I just want to swim, I'm just going to get in a pool because there is the uncertainty about the ocean course. There's the everything that gets overblown about sharks, and I'm not worried about that. But there is the unknown about, you know, what is in the water. Are there rip currents out there? What are other things? You know, this is this is the wild. You're not in a controlled situation. You're exposed to the elements and everything that's out in the ocean. So talking about beach safety and the hazards at the beach again most of time is going to be fine. But it is always in the back of your mind, like, I just like one more thing to be concerned about. So I think that's why it was just great to bring him on. A guy, talk about all the different things you do need to keep him out. You can definitely have a great time at the beach, but things to keep in mind to make sure you stay safe. Absolutely. And without further ado, we'll jump into it. Let's talk to Mr. Chase about ocean and water safety. And now we welcome on Bruckner Chase. He is an ocean and coastal safety expert who works with lifeguards, government agencies and organizations from all across the globe. He is the host of NOAA's Wave Safe Video series. He's been featured on the Weather Channel many times. That's how we first got to knowing each other a little bit here. He's also an ocean adventure athlete who has weight for this, swam 25 miles across Monterey Bay, across Lake Tahoe for 22 miles. And maybe the most impressive part has the world record for swimming without a wetsuit in Alaska. Bruckner is also a chief in an American Samoa village. He's from Memphis, Tennessee, and lives in my home state, the great Garden State of New Jersey. Bruckner, thanks for being on the Across the Sky podcast. We appreciate it. It is great to be here. And I would suggest taking a boat across Monterey Bay is probably far easier if you check the weather first than swimming across it. I could imagine. And I do want to get into some of those adventures that you have taken, but I just want to say, you know, I'm glad just personally what we've done over the past couple of weeks with you being so close to being along the Jersey Shore and promoting wave safety here. My first question for you is, you know, I know you're not a meteorologist, but what interest do you have and weather and how did that start? You know, I've got a lot of interest in weather right now and really involved with the American Meteorological Society as well. I've spoken at their last two conferences for broadcasters and communicators. And I think one of the things when I began originally my career with NOAA's started working with Natural Sanctuaries, which oversees the country's marine protected areas, when over the last several years I've been working with National Weather Service on coastal safety and the near-shore environment, as all of you know, is so impacted by weather, whether it's wind gradient portraits and waves and small craft advisories. If you're going to be in on or near the water or on the shore, the weather is really going to impact your experience there. It's going to make it a great day. It's going to make it a safe, Danny, or it can make it a dangerous day. And you need to be aware of all those changing conditions are going to impact where you are and what you're planning on doing. So tell us about the The Waves Safe series that you've been doing. If you're listening through one of our newsroom websites, you can see Bruckner's videos on there. We have them up. But what is waves safe? And tell me about the process of making it because you are talking about the whole country with this, but you're making it a little regionalized, which I think is makes you different here. When I came in with National Weather Service, you know, we had released The Ripcord Survival Guide, which focused on one specific beach hazard, which was rip currents. And we recognized, though, that rip currents were not prevalent in all of the shorelines around the U.S. in U.S. territories. And we also realized that there were a lot of other households that impacted people at the shore, not necessarily fatal impacts, but non-fatal life changing impacts as well. So National Weather Service and I, we got together saying we need to kind of expand the narrative about what people need to look for on the shore. So Wave Safe was meant to take kind of a social science approach added to the oceanographic meteorological approach of what is the science of the shore. And we wanted to take a demographic and geographic specific look at hazards. So I was charged with writing the series and then became the host of the actual video content and had the opportunity to speak to weather forecasting off to those within National Weather Service all over the country. We knew we wanted to target five main areas the East Coast, the Pacific Northwest, Southern California, Hawaii, in in American Samoa. And we wanted to look at the hazards that those forecasting meteorologists needed to communicate to that group specifically in, say, the Pacific Northwest. So here we'll talk a lot about, you know, hurricanes and how they impact the coastal environment. But you sit at Northwest, you had log rolled, you had sneaker waves, you had cold water immersion, you had pocket beaches that were, you know, could become more dangerous as tides changed significantly. So the Wave Safe series was we spent two or three years really looking at what are the hazards in specific areas, how do we communicate those not just so that people would watch the videos, but so how could we convey actions in awareness that would actually help protect individuals and communities? Because it wasn't just about impressions, it was about changing behavior to have a positive impact on fatal and nonfatal incidences out the shore. Yeah. Rutger I think that's real interesting how your really dive in and looking at differences and really across the planet, but just looking at the U.S. as well, because I think it's oftentimes does get oversimplified. And you just talk about beach safety in general, but there actually are regional differences. And I'm curious about that because you talked about the threat of rip currents. Are there certain areas that are more prone to rip currents and where we see more rip currents in other locations? Yes, as you guys know, rip currents are very determined. And now National Weather Service has a forecasting model so they can predict where it's more likely or higher risk for rip currents. It a record is a very localized event, 25, 50 years Y and really depends upon both wave action, idle action and limit what's going on underneath there. And so when you've got sand beaches like you have along much of the East Coast or around the panhandle of Florida or the Gulf Coast, they're going to be more prevalent to high out rip currents kind of forming because of the way that bottom ca
