Science & Technology

Gigantic Pacific 'rogue wave' was the most extreme on record

By T.K. Randall
December 14, 2023

Image: AI-generated (Midjourney) There was a time when the idea that a sudden, disproportionately massive wave could suddenly appear out of the blue and sink an entire ship was little more than nautical folklore.

It wasn't until 1995, in fact, when a sudden huge wave sunk an oil-drilling platform off the coast of Norway, that the reality of these gargantuan, freak waves was brought into sharp focus.

The truth is that rogue waves can and do happen, but scientists still do not fully understand how or why.

Over the last few decades there have been several dozen additional recorded examples and they are not confined to the open ocean either - there have even been cases of rogue waves in lakes.

The most extreme of them all - known as the Ucluelet wave - occurred in the Pacific in November 2020.A buoy that had been situated off the coast of British Colombia recorded a wave height of 58ft, which was approximately three times larger than the other waves around it at the time.

"Proportionally, the Ucluelet wave is likely the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded," said physicist Johannes Gemmrich of the University of Victoria.

"Only a few rogue waves in high sea states have been observed directly, and nothing of this magnitude."

Fortunately, in that particular case, nobody was hurt, but if a ship had happened to be there instead of a buoy, it could have been a very different story.

Some previously unexplained ship sinkings, in fact, are now thought to have been the result of rogue waves and climate predictions suggest that the phenomenon could become more common in the future.

Scientists will now be aiming to understand as much as possible about when and where these enormous waves are likely to occur before any more lives are lost.

Source: Science Alert

Tags: Wave, Ocean