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The Biggest Rogue Wave on Record Was a Behemoth. How Big Was it?

Originally posted on SURFER | By Dashel Pierson | Last updated Jul 22, 2025 1:51 PM ET

A sigh of relief washes over the crew. The sun peeks out from the angry clouds. They made it, they think. The small fishing vessel survived amidst a storm of biblical proportions and unfathomably large seas. But it’s fleeting; suddenly, the mother of all rogue waves darkens the horizon. It’s headed straight for the boat, as the captain punches the throttle.

That’s a scene from The Perfect Storm (2000) – the iconic scene in which the crew, helmed by captain George Clooney, is battered by an extremely large, extremely early-CGI interpretation of the mythical rogue wave. But these monsters aren’t myth; they’re real.

In a recent study, scientists attempted to recreate and better understand these rare phenomena. And they looked at the largest rogue wave on record. How big was it? 85 feet. The wave, dubbed the “Draupner Wave,” was recorded in 1995 and it struck an oil-drilling platform off the coast of Norway. No cameras captured it, but here’s a video breakdown.

So, what is a rogue wave? According to the study, “Rogue waves are large waves that may appear in both the open ocean and in near-shore waters. They are very difficult to predict and significantly bigger than other, surrounding waves. They are responsible for damage to coastal infrastructure and shipping, and their impact is amplified due to the difficulty in making predictions.”

And how big can they get? “Rogue waves have a formal definition of having a peak height of double the significant wave height, defined as the average height of the highest one third of waves over the relevant period,” the study continues. To put that into perspective, the Draupner Wave clocked in at the aforementioned 85 feet; whereas other waves in the region, during the same period, were closer to 39 feet. Hence the labeling as “rogue.”

From a surfing standpoint, the current Guinness World Record for “largest wave surfed” is held by Sebastian Steudtner for an 86-footer from Nazaré, Portugal in October of 2020 – but multiple waves suspected to be much larger have been surfed since.

Recently, another group of scientists set out to study rogue waves. In particular, they were looking off the west coast of Canada, where the “Ucluelet Wave” was recorded in 2020, and was measured by buoys at 58 feet. The researchers explained:

“These waves are at least twice as tall as the surrounding waves. They’re unpredictable. They can come from unexpected directions, often against prevailing winds and swells. You need a whole cocktail of factors to come together – wind, swell, current. It’s a chaotic, nonlinear wave interaction, where one wave will suddenly gather energy from others and explode in size.”

Once fiction, made mythical in movies; now, a reality studied by scientists.

This article first appeared on SURFER and was syndicated with permission.

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