Whether you already live near the coast or are traveling from the interior of the U.S. to visit an ocean this summer, it's always important to be safe and aware of your surroundings. Randy Townsend is the chief of the Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, Beach Patrol and an accomplished surfer. He discusses how to spot potential dangers lurking beneath the surface, the differences between rip currents and undertow, the best time of day to swim as well as stories from his time catching waves as a surfer. 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 [email protected]. 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, Lee Enterprises National Weather Podcast. New episodes come out every Monday. Hope you all enjoy your 4th of July. It got a little dicey there with the 4th of July hot dog eating contest. Of course, that was our last episode on Across the Sky. They were in a lightning. The for, I think was the first time ever. But they they came through this week. Our episode here a little bit different. We're not talking about hot dogs. We're talking about the water and we're talking about ocean safety and making sure that you're enjoying whether it's the bay, the ocean, and making sure you're staying safe as well. Being that it is July and August, we're all taking off. We're all going on vacation. So we have Randy Townsend. He has the Harvey Cedars, New Jersey, lifeguard chief, also an internationally known surfer, to talk all about that. But we have Kirsten Kirsten lying back on the podcast as well. She is joining us after a couple of months away on maternity leave. Kirsten, it's great to have you back. How's it going? How is the family? Well, thanks. You know, it's good to be back. It's good to get kind of back in the saddle and start working again. And, you know, being here with the podcast, I'm happy. Glad I missed it. Missed you guys. And doing this every week. And things are going good here in the house. I mean, it's a little chaotic. We just added our third kid to the mix. So that's, you know, it's a lot to juggle. But overall, everything's going very, very good. We're pretty blessed here. Awesome stuff. You know, we we certainly missed you in your way, but we know you were, you know, enjoying some time with the family as well. With that being said, we're going to get right into our interview here with Randy Townsend on the other side. And I am pleased to have on Randy Townsend today to talk all about marine and ocean and wave safety. Randy is a friend of mine. He is based right here in New Jersey. He is the beach patrol chief for the Harvey Cedars Beach Patrol. He's also been a competitive surfer going all across the planet. Really. You can check out some of his videos on YouTube. And he is an ocean safety expert. Randy, great to talk to you here. We're talking the year right after the 4th of July. How are you feeling now that we're really getting into peak, You know, summertime, people headed to the shore. How are you feeling? How your crew's feeling over in Harvey Cedars? Thanks for the wonderful introduction, Joe Tickled to be here again with you on your podcast and another interview as well, how I'm feeling and how our staff is feeling here today. We're absolutely elated to be up there on the beach providing, you know, public safety to, you know, the