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Comment by pigtailgirl | Hacker News Reader

-- having trouble picturing this - from a distance it look like a massive wall of water floating along on its own? - waves go up and down so why doesnt the masive wave going down change the amplitude of the waves in advance of it? - so confusing try to picture - the animation in the article didn't help --

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Short, non-technical answer: These waves are actually the "sum" of a number of different waves (of different frequency and/or phases). It can happen that many of these _usually_ cancel each other out in the sum, but once in a blue moon, their peaks happen at virtually the same time. Then you get one massive pulse. The moments right before and after could look quite normal.

Dunno but you know how you can do a single big wave on a long skipping rope traveling down the rope? You like whiplash it.

In the video they show the full animation with the surrounding wave context and it makes it a little easier to understand than the gif.

The first massive wave lumbers through at the same pace of the surrounding waves leaving you thinking "Oh that big wave is the rogue wave" when suddenly the bottom drops out and an even more massive wave comes very fast and seemingly overtakes the slower one. It seems like the slower large wave just stops in place and reduces in amplitude while the rogue wave overtakes it.

Not sure if this is what you mean but there's a documentary out there called 100 Foot Wave that has tons of video footage of gigantic waves. It's about surfing, so these waves break, but it's worth a watch if you'd like to see these things in action. The images of the waves are awe inspiring, even on a TV screen.

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