When Good Waves Go Rogue (2014) | Hacker News Reader

When Good Waves Go Rogue (2014)

nautil.us

68 pointsdnetesn12 comments

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Video of a 50-foot rogue wave from The Deadliest Catch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_8hOai9hGQ

Video of the Lego pirate being capsized in the wave tank (mentioned in the article).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayd1rvuqBzU

Sneaker waves (on shore) are also very dangerous.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sneaker_wave

http://videos.oregonlive.com/oregonian/2016/01/sneaker_wave_...

I've spent 100 of hours at sea. Reading the article I had the same thought as the captain on the fishing boat, "I've heard talk of rouge waves, but I've never seen one." That is pretty amazing. I haven't seen that video, thanks for sharing.

I bet you've seen plenty. Rogues exist amongst small waves. I bet that you have looked strait at a great many but dismissed them as a trick of light. Ever thought you saw something like a boat out of the corner of your eye yet there wasn't anything there? You may have been seeing a small rogue rise up and fall away.

The article makes it seem like we've all seen these waves, but then it says the Queen Elizabeth 2 might encounter one a year. Which is it? If it's the latter then it's likely that, unless you are habitually in the ocean, you'll be unlikely to see one in your lifetime.

You could in theory have a rogue wave only an inch tall, provided the highest expected wave was only fractions of an inch tall. This has nothing to do with the absolute size of the wave, but it's size relative to the other waves. Now this article dramatizes a wave that is dozens of feet tall, that's what's rarer.

Spend time surfing, measurements will say one thing, but local knowledge will educate you on the possibilities.

I've been out on a 5-7 foot day to have an 12+' rogue set roll through. That isn't fun (depending on skill), it gets more interesting when it's an 8+' day and 15+ footers roll threw. Not my thing, but interesting to experience a couple of times.

The interesting thing for me is the power behind it. You just don't know until you experience such. It's hard surfing because you often also have to be aware of and Leary of those around you plus what is happening.

This has to do with the 'statistical distribution of the heights of individual waves'[0]. I don't think that there are sets of rouge waves there is only the one rouge wave.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_wave_height#Statis...

It depends on your perspective. There may be the one wave, but a wave has both a crest and a trough. So there is the one wave, but as you ride down its backside into the trough that second wave appears far bigger despite it not technically being a rogue.

"As you travel down the tail of the probability distribution, rogue waves become ever stranger. Not only can their size and direction be unexpected, but they can appear in some unlikely places."

I realize that next to the privations and risks of long sea voyages in ye olde days, the risk of a truly catastrophic rogue wave was slim. Still, the notion that you could have spent a lifetime on the seas, truly an expert with the right supplies and equipment... and you could still face a monster like the ones described in the article.

Terrifying. Who needs Krakens when you have that?!

That's the problem with statistically rare events. The old social paradigm of listing to a person with a lifetime of experience doesn't work. Ten lifetimes of experience isn't enough to have a good chance of witnessing the event. Only with modern electronic/video surveillance can we collect many thousands of lifetimes worth of experience. This has parallels in many other areas of human endeavor (medicine, extreme weather) where one must sometimes dismiss the old hats in favor of statistical analysis.

Rogue waves aren't rare. just short-lived. They rise up and fall away very quickly, unlike normal waves which travel great distances. Tsunamis (aka port waves) are the opposite, traveling enormous distances. The "port" in port wave is the observation that tsunami bypass breakwaters to travel into ports. That's isn't just because of their size, but because they are something mechanically different than a normal wave. So too with rogues.

As a boater we are always on the lookout for the big waves. When NOAA says 2-3' waves, we will see 5', 6' and 7' waves. But it's that one off (not so one off) 9-10' wave that gives you a real appreciation for how vindictive Mother Nature can really be.

I'd assume the lego pirate wave was due to the malfunctioning of the wave-generator and not due to any mystery properties of water.

I mean there obviously are mystery properties of water, just that in such a controlled environment as that video a malfunction seems much more likely.

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