Rogue Wave Day - January 1

Happy Rogue Wave Day! 

Admittedly if you actually encounter a rogue wave, happiness might not be the feeling that you're experiencing, since they are a powerful and dangerous force of nature.

Rogue waves are considered fairly common and extremely large waves for which we don't really understand the cause(s). They are waves run wild, as their name "rogue" suggests.

They are not tsunami waves, which are caused by things like earthquakes suddenly displacing a lot of water. They also differ from tsunami waves in that tsunami waves are almost a non-factor in deep ocean water, and only cause trouble in shallow water or at the shore.

On this date in 1995 the first rogue wave (the Draupner Wave) was measured from a gas pipeline support complex in the North Sea. A wave 84 feet in height was detected. While larger waves have been measured since then, empirical evidence of waves this big got the attention of the scientific community.

It's believed that we don't have a rich documented history of these waves because for most of our seafaring history, encountering these waves would be fatal. (And I suppose any ships that did survive would be accused of exaggeration.)

Some AI results suggest these waves may be much more common than we ever thought.

By Katsushika Hokusai - Metropolitan Museum of Art, online database: entry 45434, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2798407


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