Thursday, January 12, 2023

Likely The Most Extreme "Rogue Wave" Ever Recorded: 2020, Off Vancouver BC, In North Pacific Ocean...


See it at right, via a computer modeled *.gif file.

Yes, this is a bit of a life science tangent -- but I think it a cool one. Here's the whole story, and a bit:

. . .In November of 2020, a freak wave came out of the blue, lifting a lonesome buoy off the coast of British Columbia 17.6 meters high (58 feet).

The four-story wall of water was finally confirmed in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded. . . .

Such an exceptional event was thought to occur only once every 1,300 years. . . . For centuries, rogue waves were considered nothing but nautical folklore. . . . It wasn't until 1995 that myth became fact. On the first day of the new year, a nearly 26-meter-high wave (85 feet) suddenly struck an oil-drilling platform roughly 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast of Norway. . . .

Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. . . . [T]he Ucluelet [Island, BC] wave was nearly three times the size of its peers. . . .


Welp -- the thought is that climate change is both increasing the severity of these waves, and the frequency of their occurrence -- in the Pacific, specifically. That makes sense.

In any event, that would be quite a surfers' set / session, indeed. Very gnarly. . . lethal, even. . . but grin-worthy. Onward.

नमस्ते

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