summer may be over for most people in New Jersey but the water's still warm at the shore and families are still going to the beach but this year's hurricane season is creating dangerous rip currents that have led to a surge in rescues and even drownings in fact four people drowned this past Labor Day weekend Ted Goldberg spoke to lifeguards and beachgoers about the conditions in the water and what you should look for to stay safe we got off at six o'clock the call came in at 606. so we were still in the area packing our gear up six minutes after belmar's lifeguards called it a day Sunday they ran back into the water to rescue swimmers stuck in a rip current most of them survived but Roselle Park resident Gilberto Mendez Jr drowned maybe about 50 yards to 100 yards north of us I saw a group of lifeguards going in the water there up you know to the north of us and they had spotted somebody that you know in trouble out there by the time they got to that person they were already unconscious Carson says this was the first drowning of the season in Belmar and a reminder that people should not go swimming in the ocean if there are no lifeguards on duty but harson gets that sometimes people just want to go in the ocean if you're going to go in don't go in alone don't go out far don't go in at night at least four people drowned off The Jersey Shore over Labor Day weekend as hurricane season increases the severity of rip currents Surfer Steve Hauser knows what it's like to get caught in one I started swimming to get back in and Mike I'm not going anywhere it has a feeling of a sucking Sensation that you're getting pulled out to see Hauser lives in Toms River and went to LBI last weekend to shoot a YouTube video while he was there he rescued a man caught in a rip current and unknowingly filmed it on his GoPro he just grabbed on from dear life he held onto those handles and thank God I had that board I served eight years in the Marine Corps so I know to go for the one who's in the most danger so I have that rescue water survival experience that they trained Us in boot camp Hauser's heroics were far from the only rescue from rip currents last weekend we probably had 25 or 30 rescues that day the water was very very bad and it was very very hot so we really couldn't keep them out we tried to keep them in in tight but then when a set of waves would come in somebody go from at their waist level up to their chest level Asbury Park Beach safety advisor Joe Bon Jovani says a trained eye can spot a rip current from the shore the water gets discolored and you get a little bit of a ripple effect and you can see as the waves come in you can see it actually pushes through the wave coming in and you know it cuts right through it and then you get a big what they call a rip head at the end of it looks like like a mushroom according to the National oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration at least 30 people have drowned in New Jersey because of rip currents since 2010. the currents can push swimmers away from Shore at five miles per hour the fastest Olympian Miler can't outslem a rip current Robert deal works for the National Weather Service and says five miles per hour in the ocean feels much different than five miles per hour on land they're generally caused by waves that are kind of crashing up on the shore and then what happens is that all of that wave action has pushed all the water up to Shore and it has to turn around and go offshore sophomore and so what they do is they form and and sometimes narrow sometimes wider corridors and then that water starts to push back out offshore deal says rip currents happen year round but are more dangerous during Hurricane Season when a storm a thousand miles away can make things worse in New Jersey you've got that the storm is out in the Atlantic Ocean and it's churning up a lot of water and then that water starts to dissipate as that that swell so the swelled wave is actually what dissipates and moves and carries it away from that storm hurricane Lee is currently a category 4 storm in the Atlantic it's expected to remain strong through next week as it moves slowly towards the east coast and it's already strong enough to contribute to dangerous rip currents down the shore in Monmouth County I'm Ted Goldberg NJ Spotlight news