High surf advisory, rip current warnings in effect for Brevard
BY J.D. GALLOP
FLORIDA TODAY
Waves generated by Ophelia caused erosion last week on the beach near Indialantic. Karen Sternberg, vacationing from Ohio, makes the best of a windy situation. Michael R. Brown, FLORIDA TODAY
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Hurricane Ophelia might be hundreds of miles away but its impact can still be felt today in Brevard County - including rip currents, beach erosion and reports of sea turtle nest damage.
The Category 1 hurricane is centered off the coast of the Carolinas and is expected to skirt along the northeastern corridor of the U.S. later this week.
Its counter-clockwise rotation is pulling drier air from the north into Florida. That means clearer skies, sunny weathers and near-perfect beach going conditions in Brevard for the next few days.
But it also means a small craft advisory for boaters along with high surf and and rip current warnings for swimmers venturing out to the county's 72 mile-long stretch of beaches.
Rip currents are powerful currents that can pull swimmers out to sea.
The storm, which meandered off of Cape Canaveral for several days after forming off of the southeastern Florida coast, also prompted authorities to warn of possible beach erosion to some areas already hard hit by last year's hurricane season.
"Just from my observation I noticed that we lost 2 vertical feet of sand in South Brevard," said John Pendergrast, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Melbourne.
Pendergrast, who lives in the Floridana Beach area, said Ophelia's slow pass north along the coast brought rough waves to the area for the last five days.
"A lot of turtle nests were also washed out to sea," he said.
Today's temperature will reach the lower 90s while the heat index - a scale that measures the feeling of heat and humidity on the human skin - will hover in the same range, officials said.
The low tonight will be near 70 degrees.
Sunny skies will also remain for much of the week along with mild breezes out of the north, prompted by Ophelia's wind pattern.
"What this has done for us is produce drier conditions," Pendergrast said. "Right now, our rain chances have fallen virtually to zero for the next few day."
