80-Foot Rogue Waves Are Predictable...But Are they Rideable?

Mythological, massive waves – much like giant squids, ghost ships, and Lovecraftian undersea monsters – have long been a staple in maritime folklore.

Seafarers returning to land, sipping ale under candlelight, spinning yarns of anomalous, humungous walls of water, appearing out of nowhere, and gobbling up anything in their path. Waves like the one depicted in the iconic 2000 film, The Perfect Storm.

Turns out, these abnormally large, exceptionally random waves are real. And scientists are finding waves to predict them – meaning, can they be surfed?

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The first and largest documented rogue wave was an 84-foot behemoth, which struck the Draupner platform oil rig, off Norway in the North Sea back on January 1st, 1995. Thus, it was dubbed the Draupner Wave. And now, three decades later, scientists have been accumulating data to try and predict how and why rogue waves occur.

Per a new study in Scientific Reports, a group of researchers launched an investigation into rogue waves, discovering new insights into how these freak swells work.

“Imagine a stadium crowd leaving through a long, narrow hallway,” researcher Francisco Fedele told Scientific American. “People at the back push forward, and some even climb over others, piling up in the crush. That’s like a rogue wave in a wave tank. But if the stadium doors open onto a wide field, people spread out, and there’s no pileup. That’s the open ocean—rogue waves there don’t follow the same physics.”

Unlike traditional waves and swell, rogue waves have a particular and potentially-detectable “fingerprint,” according to the researchers. ScientificAmerican reports:

“The new analysis suggests that when swells from several wave trains overlap in certain patterns, these sharpened crests can stack dramatically to build a single, towering wall of water—and the study also offers a measurable precursor pattern to this type of stacking.”

Now, the question is, if these waves can be predicted (aka “forecasted”), then…can they be surfed? Would anyone want to surf them? Maybe one day.