Posted on 05/22/2017 12:55:11 PM PDT by C19fan
Earlier today, MetOcean Solutions' wave buoy in the Southern Ocean recorded a whopping 19.4 m wave.
Senior Oceanographer Dr Tom Durrant is thrilled. "This is one of the largest waves recorded in the Southern Hemisphere," he explains. "This is the world's southern-most wave buoy moored in the open ocean, and we are excited to put it to the test in large seas."
(Excerpt) Read more at metocean.co.nz ...
There is a big difference between a 64 foot swell in the open ocean and a 64 foot face on a breaking wave as it approaches shore. In the open sea, roughly 2/3 of a wave’s size is underwater, and as it approaches shallower water, the shallower bottom causes the wave stand up until finally the drag created by the bottom causes the top of the wave to topple over or break.
Although this 64 foot swell will break as a huge wave at its final destination, it is unlikely to be 100 plus feet, because much of a wave’s size and energy is dissipated as it travels across the open ocean and hits rocks, reefs or islands before finally reaching the continental shore.
The Ninth Wave
I’m torn between global warming or blaming Trump
That looks like macnamara in potugal
Thanks for bringing back not so pleasant memories.
Not the same. At all.
The buoy measures the height of a ‘wave’ (think pulse) in the middle of the ocean - NOT near the shore.
HUGE difference!
A pulse like that could, with the correct conditions, create an actual wave of hundreds of feet.
Hopefully the ‘wave’ or ‘pulse’ heads towards Antarctica.
BTW - I was caught in a rogue wave once. Heard it coming (10:00 PM) and saw it due to a bright moon.
RAN LIKE HELL away from it, likely 500 feet, jumped onto a large piece of driftwood and the wave passed by (got very wet from the spray).
Just south two women who had just left a movie and were taking a nice walk on the beach were drowned.
There’s got to be a morning after...
There is a major difference between open ocean swell height and breaking wave height at the coast. Even at Mavericks at Pillar Point. The giant waves that are surfed here often break on swells that are between 15-25’ @ 15-18 second periods. When the open ocean swell nears the coast it begins to build in height as the deeper energy feels the friction from the ocean bottom. Eventually the wave jacks up in height and the top part is moving faster than the bottom and the wave breaks and people can surf it.
For example, last month I was surfing in Nicaragua and the open ocean swell was 6’ @ 18 seconds but the wave face at some of the bigger breaks was closer to 12’.
N-Way superposition
Actually it isn’t bad unless you are stupid and don’t dive into the wave before it breaks ... if you dive in on a big wave you just get to hold your breath until you surface (and hope the following wave has not broke before you do)
If you hang too long and the wave breaks... the wave uses your body like a garden hoe and you collect coral and sand and contusions and death because it is tough to be buoyant in bubbles.
At least that has been my experience
My dad was stationed in Japan in the 1950s when I was a little kid. To join him, my mom and I sailed from Seattle to Yokohama, two weeks aboard an MSTS ship.
I do recall seeing some massive Pacific swells, some seemingly higher than the top mast.
The equatorial bulge has the ocean depth 400 feet deeper at the equator than it is at the poles. Have the earth tilt off its axis even a little from pole shift abruptly and have tidal waves several hundred feet high swamping coastlines inland like a big sloshing bathtub.
Back in the late '70's we had a Gator Navy cruise coming back from the Med to North Carolina. Freak cold front hit with winds measured at 90 mph at Cherry Point. The LPH was taking green water over the bow - Flight Deck is 60 feet above water level. They said the CH-46s tied down forward spent a total of about half an hour under water from the waves over the deck.
Several of the rotor blades, which were folded and secured, were broken at the rotor hubs from the force of the waves.
The Southern Ocean’s Roaring Forties, Furious Fifties, and Shrieking Sixties indeed. As bad the storms in the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska, they can’t hold a candle to the storms of the Southern Ocean. Seamen dreaded rounding Cape Horn.
USS Ramapoo 1933 112’ measured
That is truly “pucker time!”
Circa 1982 North Sea:
I was working the North Sea on a Sedco drilling rig. We had a big storm and a freak wave. Our Helideck was 115 feet above the water. The waves were running about 40 feet and that is even big by North Sea standards. We pitched into this freak wave and it tore off all the equipment (they were secured down) and the netting on the Helideck. The wave was a monster. It also broke down one of the doors to the crew quarters. I heard all the noise and jumped of my bunk into cold sea water.
The Alexander Kieland had went down the year before and 113 went down with it. Some were my friends. When my feet hit the cold seawater I grabbed my survival suit and ran up the stairs with water pouring down them. All I could think was “please god” let me make it to the deck and not drown like a rat like my friends on the Kieland. I thought we were going down. I did not even stop to tell the other guys in the room to run. If I had of stopped they would have run over me up the stairs. We all thought we were fleeing for our lives. All of us were running up the stairs with our survival suits in our hands.
Luckily we were stable and our semi-submersible rig was good for the storm. As we were pitching into the wave troughs 10 or 15 degrees although the helideck was 115 feet above the water that means that wave was at least 100 feet or more. On the deck huge steel containers were batted about like toys. It scared the hell out of me and I had been working on the water for 15 years at that time.
Click Link Below to see the Borgholm Dophin (Norwegian Sector North Sea) in a storm. To put it in perspective the air gap between the bottom of the vessel and the sea is about 60 feet. The wave that hit us was higher, much higher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98HUCFbaUGY
"Come on Louis. THAT wave will get us to freedom for sure!"
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