Warnings coming to a beach near you

Hundreds of signs will soon be posted at area beaches in hope of preventing more drownings from ocean rip currents.

Two Massachusetts men drowned earlier this summer, and roughly 100 people nationwide die each year when they become trapped in powerful, narrow currents that form as piles of water rush back to sea.

Although Massachusetts already posts signs at the most dangerous beaches in Hull, Nahant, Salisbury, and Westport, rip currents can form at almost any ocean beach, state officials said yesterday. The state and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sea Grant program are teaming up to post hundreds of warnings at ocean beaches to give visitors step-by-step directions to escape.

The colorful signs, to be installed during the next few weeks, will tell visitors not to fight the current, but to swim out of it, often parallel to the beach, to escape its pull and only then swim to shore. If escape is difficult, swimmers should tread water and wave to lifeguards for help.

''Your instinct tells you do one thing, and you have to do the opposite," said Andrea Cohen, communications manager for MIT Sea Grant, which is donating more than 300 laminated posters in English and Spanish. ''You think swimming in a straight line to shore is the most sensible way to go, but it's not."

While the currents often fade within a hundred yards of shore and do not pull people underwater, swimmers sometimes panic and try to swim against them, occasionally becoming so exhausted that they drown. Rip currents can move as fast as 8 feet per second, faster than an Olympic swimmer, according to the National Weather Service.

Sea Grant, a congressionally funded national program to protect marine resources, is attempting to raise awareness nationwide about rip currents, sometimes erroneously called riptides or undertow.

On July 4, two Massachusetts men drowned at Hampton Beach in New Hampshire after a rip current carried 12 people out to sea. The men were trapped as they tried to save the 10-year-old stepson of one of them. The boy survived.

On Aug. 5, a young surfer had to be rescued at Nantasket Beach after becoming caught in one.

''These signs [will be] a great addition," said Gary Briere, recreation bureau chief for the state Department of Conservation and Recreation.

Lifeguards are trained to rescue people in rip currents, but swimmers need to be aware how to escape, he said. ''No matter how many times people see the signage to swim off to the side, you continually find people who instantly panic and swim against it."

In the summer, rip currents tend to form as distant storms create swells offshore that cause large waves that break on beaches. Meteorologists say that if swells reach 5 feet offshore, rip currents can develop onshore. The last few weeks of August and early September, when there are frequent tropical storms, are an active time for rip currents.

The water ''searches for the weakest part in the sandbar, and that creates the current," said Frank Nocera, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Taunton. The service issues rip current warnings ranging from low to high. His office studied the Hampton Beach rip current that killed the two men and concluded it was an isolated event, not based on a particular tropical storm. ''There wasn't much wave action." he said.