Giant waves, one of the ocean structures that prove how destructive nature can be, pose a great threat to a ship or any structure that finds it where it comes out. Because this giant body of water has a much longer structure compared to the waves around it. This can make these waves more deadly.
In the past days, researchers announced that a new wave that broke a record in one subject has been recorded. The wave detected off Vancouver Island was actually not as big as the giant waves recorded before. But what caused this wave to break the record was due to the unpredictable nature of the giant waves.
It was 3 times the height of the waves around it:
Measured in November 2020, the giant wave had a length of about 17.6 meters. Even though the giant waves were mostly above this number, what made this wave special was that it was much higher than the waves around it. The waves around the 17.6 meter wave were only 6 meters tall. In other words, there was suddenly a difference of more than 11 meters between this wave and the other waves.
This wave type, which is different from tsunamis, was first detected on the Norwegian coast in 1995. Known as the ‘Draupner wave’, this wave had a length of 25.6 meters. Other waves around the wave were 12 meters long, a little less than half the size. In the record breaking wave, the difference was much larger as can be seen. The wave was almost 3 times larger than those around it.
When this ratio is taken into account, the 17.6-meter wave called ‘Ucluelet’ was recorded as the most extreme giant wave to date. Johannes Gemmrich from Victoria University, who made a statement about the research, explained that the probability of such a wave to occur is once in 1,300 years. How huge the wave is compared to the waves around it is shown concretely in the animation below. The wave in question shows itself after the 30th second of the video.
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