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Comment by CapmCrackaWaka | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand this article. It says at the beginning:

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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 in February 2022 as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded.

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However, right below that, it says:

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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.

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New wave is 58 feet, wave in 1995 is 85 feet?

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> 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.

The one in Norway was only roughly double the height of surrounding waves.

>> Scientists define a rogue wave as any wave more than twice the height of the waves surrounding it.

Right, so they have to be much more common than said, because a rogue wave could be 6" high on glass-calm seas.

It is indeed unclear.

The resolution is that the absolute rogue-wave-height isn't the measure of extreme, it's the rogue-wave-height relative to the typical height. This is explained in TFA if you read carefully.

> 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.

And of course this makes sense.

'Extreme' is probably relative to the other waves in the area. Like doritos extreme.

Basically a five foot wave surrounded by one foot waves would be most extremist extremely rogue wave ever.

as the article says, it's "most extreme" with respect to its size compared to the surrounding waves: "the Ucluelet wave was nearly three times the size of its peers."

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