I’ve always been attracted to the idea of rogue waves. Having spent a good portion of my life (closing in on 2%) of my life on the beaches of North Carolina and amongst the Graveyard of the Atlantic likely gave me an impulse in that direction. Later years would see an intense emotional response to Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and a love of the movies “White Squall” and “Poseidon Adventure” among other related media and news events that ran along similar themes. Watching big wave surfing and having a desire some day to see the enormous rollers off of Nazare in person also accompanied these interests. With all this I follow various sites that report on ocean events and so this came along my way: https://www.theinertia.com/surf/record-breaking-rogue-wave-measured-near-tofino-british-columbia/
While not the biggest wave on record (which was actually a tsunami of over 1700 feet in Alaska in 1958), nor the biggest wave surfed (somewhere between 80 and 100 feet at Nazare), nor the biggest open ocean rogue wave (95 feet measured by a UK scientific vessel), we now have a new contender in a sub-category…Largest rogue wave as a deviation from its peers…
First off, a rogue wave by definition is one that is at least twice the height of its peers. The first scientifically measured rogue wave (prior to which scientists had declared that rogue waves simply didn’t exist and were a figment of seafarer imagination) was the so named “Draupner” wave in 1995 which measured 84 feet near Norway with its peers being around 40 feet. So just slightly more than 2X its companions. Huge but not the outlier that our newest famous wave was.
Over in the Pacific near Vancouver Island was recorded in 2020 a 17.6 meter (55 foot roughly) wave that was more than 5X the 3.27 meter norm of preceding waves. A true freak out of nowhere. (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05671-4) No known earthquakes or landslides are known to have caused it and given its relatively calm surrounding seas it doesn’t seem to be related to a major storm at the time.
Now our brilliant scientists along with this recording comes a statement that this wave is a one in 1300 year occurrence…Yeah…no…
What are the chances that after centuries of saying that such waves don’t exist that we begin measuring for them and low and behold, instances of rogue waves begin popping up all over—North Sea, Norway, South Atlantic where satellites measuring for unusual wave heights by radar indicate that they are actually quite common, etc. and not only that…but now that we are measuring…in the first two decades or so of measuring that we capture a “once in two millennia” event? Color me unimpressed by our scientific populace in this instance. Its a typical crafting of an unscientific story around data by people who don’t observe the real world. Talk to the ship captains, lighthouse keepers, and readers of history to know that these things exist and understand that just because you have only recently acknowledged the existence of these things and begun measuring for them, doesn’t mean that they haven’t always been there and occurring far more often than what your incomplete data and understanding of natural events would indicate. Skepticism…it works and will do you well. Till then? Let us say:
Eternal Father, Strong to save
Whose arm hath bound the restless wave
Who bids the mighty ocean deep
Its own appointed limits keep
Oh, hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril on the sea