Latest news with #Draupner
Yahoo
06-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
The Biggest Rogue Wave on Record Was a Behemoth. How Big Was it?
A sigh of relief washes over the crew. The sun peeks out from the angry clouds. They made it, they think. The small fishing vessel survived amidst a storm of biblical proportions and unfathomably large seas. But it's fleeting; suddenly, the mother of all rogue waves darkens the horizon. It's headed straight for the boat, as the captain punches the throttle. That's a scene from The Perfect Storm (2000) – the iconic scene in which the crew, helmed by captain George Clooney, is battered by an extremely large, extremely early-CGI interpretation of the mythical rogue wave. But these monsters aren't myth; they're real. In a recent study, scientists attempted to recreate and better understand these rare phenomena. And they looked at the largest rogue wave on record. How big was it? 85 feet. The wave, dubbed the 'Draupner Wave,' was recorded in 1995 and it struck an oil-drilling platform off the coast of Norway. No cameras captured it, but here's a video breakdown. So, what is a rogue wave? According to the study, 'Rogue waves are large waves that may appear in both the open ocean and in near-shore waters. They are very difficult to predict and significantly bigger than other, surrounding waves. They are responsible for damage to coastal infrastructure and shipping, and their impact is amplified due to the difficulty in making predictions.' And how big can they get? 'Rogue waves have a formal definition of having a peak height of double the significant wave height, defined as the average height of the highest one third of waves over the relevant period,' the study continues. To put that into perspective, the Draupner Wave clocked in at the aforementioned 85 feet; whereas other waves in the region, during the same period, were closer to 39 feet. Hence the labeling as 'rogue.' From a surfing standpoint, the current Guinness World Record for 'largest wave surfed' is held by Sebastian Steudtner for an 86-footer from Nazaré, Portugal in October of 2020 – but multiple waves suspected to be much larger have been surfed another group of scientists set out to study rogue waves. In particular, they were looking off the west coast of Canada, where the 'Ucluelet Wave' was recorded in 2020, and was measured by buoys at 58 feet. The researchers explained: 'These waves are at least twice as tall as the surrounding waves. They're unpredictable. They can come from unexpected directions, often against prevailing winds and swells. You need a whole cocktail of factors to come together – wind, swell, current. It's a chaotic, nonlinear wave interaction, where one wave will suddenly gather energy from others and explode in size.' Once fiction, made mythical in movies; now, a reality studied by Biggest Rogue Wave on Record Was a Behemoth. How Big Was it? first appeared on Surfer on Jul 22, 2025 Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Giant Wave in Pacific Ocean Was The Most Extreme 'Rogue Wave' on Record
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 a couple of years later as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded. Such an exceptional event is thought to occur only once every 1,300 years. And unless the buoy had been taken for a ride, we might never have known it even happened. 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. At the time, the so-called Draupner wave defied all previous models scientists had put together. Since then, dozens more rogue waves have been recorded (some even in lakes), and while the one that surfaced near Ucluelet, Vancouver Island was not the tallest, its relative size compared to the waves around it was unprecedented. Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it. The Draupner wave, for instance, was 25.6 meters tall, while its neighbors were only 12 meters tall. In comparison, the Ucluelet wave was nearly three times the size of its peers. "Proportionally, the Ucluelet wave is likely the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded," explained physicist Johannes Gemmrich from the University of Victoria in 2022. "Only a few rogue waves in high sea states have been observed directly, and nothing of this magnitude." Today, researchers are still trying to figure out how rogue waves are formed so we can better predict when they will arise. This includes measuring rogue waves in real time and also running models on the way they get whipped up by the wind. The buoy that picked up the Ucluelet wave was placed offshore along with dozens of others by a research institute called MarineLabs in an attempt to learn more about hazards out in the deep. Even when freak waves occur far offshore, they can still destroy marine operations, wind farms, or oil rigs. If they are big enough, they can even put the lives of beachgoers at risk. Luckily, neither Ucluelet nor Draupner caused any severe damage or took any lives, but other rogue waves have. Some ships that went missing in the 1970s, for instance, are now thought to have been sunk by sudden, looming waves. The leftover floating wreckage looks like the work of an immense white cap. Unfortunately, a 2020 study predicted wave heights in the North Pacific are going to increase with climate change, which suggests the Ucluelet wave may not hold its record for as long as our current predictions suggest. Experimental research published last year suggests these monstrous waves can be up to four times higher than previously thought possible. "We are aiming to improve safety and decision-making for marine operations and coastal communities through widespread measurement of the world's coastlines," said MarineLabs CEO Scott Beatty. "Capturing this once-in-a-millennium wave, right in our backyard, is a thrilling indicator of the power of coastal intelligence to transform marine safety." The study was published in Scientific Reports. An earlier version of this article was published in February 2022. Crows Are So Smart They Can Identify Geometric Shapes, Study Finds Owl Wings Glow Pink And It Could Be Sending a Secret Message Strange Bacteria That Can't Live Alone Hint at Early Steps to Complex Life
