New Software Could Warn Sailors of Rogue Waves

Reservoir Hill writes "Sailors have been telling stories for centuries about monstrous ocean waves that tower over a hundred feet in the air and toss ships around like corks. While these were once dismissed as nautical myth, but a few years back synthetic aperture radar from ESA's ERS satellites helped establish the existence of these 'rogue' waves and study their origins. Such waves were far more common than anyone had expected. Now a researcher in Madrid has developed software that can detect rogue waves from radar images, with the possibility of providing advance warning to ships at sea. The software uses a mathematical model to evaluate and process the spatial and temporal dimensions of waves inferred from the interaction between the radar's electromagnetic energy and the sea surface. The result is displayed in a color-coded image."

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[theNote]

Obligatory rogue wave video from Deadliest Catch on Discovery channel:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=l_8hOai9hGQ [youtube.com]

I survived one that hit shore.

[JimMarch(equalccw)]

More people get killed along the Pacific NorthWest coast by rogue waves than by sharks.

I was 12, picking mussels along the coast about 20 miles south of San Francisco - "Sail Rock" just south of San Francisco. It was a very low tide and a smaller rock just off the main one was accessible when the water flowed out between major waves. This smaller rock was about 2ft wide, 10ft long and about 10ft high, and the top 4ft was bone dry, higher than even the spray patterns let alone wave action.

My dad and kid brother (age 8) were on the main rock. I had made it out to the smaller rock and was filling a bucket with the biggest mussels I'd ever handled. I had my bucket mostly full when I glanced up.

I'd been warned about these things and I knew the 20-ft tall wall of water coming at me was a killer. They pick people up, smash 'em on the rocks behind them then drag them out to sea unconscious...or sometimes grab people right off sandy beaches.

My dad spotted it around the same time and pulled my kid brother further up the main rock (about 70ft tall). I don't know how far up they made it - my dad got seriously wet and had to cling to my brother while assuming I was toast.

My only chance was to straddle the smaller rock like a jockey on a horse and hand on. I remember thinking about options while the whole world slowed down, and then doing the straddle and grab number. When the wave hit it was like being flushed down a giant toilet. The water peaked out around 4ft over my head. As it washed out, my dad said the sight of me doing my best imitation of a big funny-lookin' barnacle was the best sight he'd ever seen.

It dragged the glasses off my face, never saw that bucket or hammer again, hands were cut up but I made it.

That thing was well over 10x the size of the normal waves coming in.

My dad wasn't upset with me. He knew I'd thought I was going to die and knew I'd always, always keep an eyeball on that ocean when near it.

Heh. It was my mom that freaked out worse when we got home but she too understood I'd had enough problems.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[zippthorne]

My recollection may be poor, but I don't remember scientists actually saying rogue waves can't exist. I do remember they said they couldn't model them using the linearized CFD simulations that had become popular, and when processing power finally grew to the point where they could cross fewer terms off of the ol' Navier-Stokes equations, they found something that resembled rogue waves in the results.

I suspect this is a case where one group of scientists or engineers misinterpreted or exaggerated the results of another group of scientists and engineers.

My experience with a rouge wave

[lancejjj]

I was about 18 years old when I was putt-putting around in a small 20-foot motor boat in Narragansett Bay of off Rhode Island with some friends.

We were fishing and otherwise having a good time, when I noticed a large wave coming towards us in otherwise calm waters. In panic, I quickly pointed it out my friend Bruce who was piloting the craft. "No problem", he said, who calmly started to turn the boat into the wave. I don't think he quite understood how huge the wave was - maybe he was thinking it was the wake from another boat.... clearly its size didn't register with him.

But I sure did recognize the size of this wave, and it was considerably higher than 10 feet. I ducked and covered and held on for dear life, but it was faster or closer than I thought.

Before I was ready for it, the wave threw up the boat and slammed it back down at an unnatural angle. We were all knocked around. I was thrown from the bow to the stern of the boat, getting my body knocked on the windshield, my friends, and the seats (in that order). Bruce landed in the water, and someone helped him back on board.

The boat was flooded, but no one was seriously hurt. We checked out our bloody scrapes, put equipment back in place, and mopped up all the water in the boat.

It was weird - just this one big wave in a calm bay on a calm summer morning.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[ricree]

they were so set in their ways that they couldn't see any way such a wave could exit

Except that scientists actually looked at the evidence and eventually found that they did exist. So how exactly were they "set in their waves". They did what they were supposed to do. They looked at a reported phenomenon and skeptically investigated it until they were able to determine one way or another whether it actually existed. Then once there was actually something to study, they set out to understanding what was actually going on. Please tell me what exactly they should have done differently here.

Would saying "ok, I believe you" without any evidence or understanding actually have saved any of the lives lost?

Re:My experience with a rouge wave

[flyingfsck]

This happens frequently in bays, since waves diffract around the capes and then you get constructive interference between the normal waves and the two diffractions, causing occasional waves 3 times taller than normal.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[ozbird]

When you look at some of the flag-on-convenience rust buckets plying the oceans, the fact that some never make it isn't too hard to believe without invoking rogue waves, kraken etc. - Occam's razor.

My father can...Thought I would share this story

[mindaktiviti]

"Tsunami in the middle of the pacific"...this is THE story my dad has. Every dad has one, the one story he'll tell his kids and grandkids...and this one is his.

Fresh out of Politechnika Gdaska (Gdansk University of Technology) my dad took a job as a communication's officer on a fishing boat that did fishing in the pacific, and they were away for 18 months.

In 1978 between November 10th & 17th, about 60 miles west of Vancouver island, a rogue wave hit my dad's 150m(524') fishing ship. The wave came from the north (the direction they were facing) and it was about 60m (200') big. They were in a bad storm for about a week and on the last night of the storm the wave hit them. Luckily they were facing it and it wasn't one that was rolling over itself (don't know the correct terminology), but it was just this huge mass of water rolling towards them.

It was the ship captain, the first officer, ship's engineer, and himself - ship's communication officer that were inside the top part where you steer the boat (once again, not sure of proper terminology). They weren't expecting it but essentially what happened was their ship was going sort of up and down with the regular waves, but with this one it just went up...and up...and up...and the engine started sputtering very loudly, almost choking, and the entire ship was just on this impossible angle for an impossible amount of time. And then the wave passed and the ship went back down. What they saw was essentially a wall of water rolling towards them that was about the size of an apartment building.

When this happened several crew members went above and they were just white like ghosts because the sensations they felt were so unnatural. The ship's engineer who had over 30 years of sea experience said that never in his life has he ever gone through anything like that. And yes...if they were facing sideways when they met the wave, I wouldn't be here because my father would have perished. No one believed what they said, including a lot of the crew on the actual ship! It was just something that wasn't possible for them.

I highly doubt that what he told me was bullshit because of the amount of detail he used and also the fact that he didn't even know what they were (i.e. the name "Rogue Wave"), and also because he told me this story many years ago.

Re:Stoopid scientists get sailors killed.

[thejuggler]

I used to be in the US Navy. I did face a wave like that and bigger. We took a 70+ foot wave, bow first thankfully, while riding the front of a massive January storm somewhere off the coast of Oregon. I was on an FFG which can handle a wave that size much better than a fishing boat, but it was still one heck of a ride.

A few years back I was watching an episode on one of the Discovery network channels about some oceanic researches. Their research ship was hit by a rouge wave. It was then when scientists actually got hit by one that they started thinking of sailors accounts of rouge waves as credible. Damn pointed head morons. It took slapping them in the face with a giant wave for them to believe they existed.