Tsunamis are the largest and most powerful ocean waves that sweep away everything in their path with terrifying force. The peculiarity of such a dangerous natural disaster is the size of the moving wave, its enormous speed, and the gigantic distance between the crests, which reaches tens of kilometers. The tsunami poses an extreme danger to coastal zone. Approaching the shore, the wave gains enormous speed, contracts in front of the obstacle, grows significantly in size and deals a crushing and irreparable blow to the land area.
What causes this huge influx of water, which leaves even the tallest and fortified structures no chance of survival? What natural forces can create a water tornado and deprive cities and regions of the right to survive? Movement tectonic plates and splits in the earth's crust are the worst harbingers of the collapse of a giant stream.
The largest tsunami in the world in the history of mankind
Which is the most famous a big wave in the world? Let's look through the pages of history. The date July 9, 1958 is well remembered by Alaskans. It was this day that became fatal for the Lituya fjord, which is located in the northeastern part of the Gulf of Alaska. Harbinger historical event there was an earthquake, the strength of which was measured to be 9.1. This is what caused the terrifying rockfall, which caused the collapse of rocks and a wave of unprecedented magnitude.
The whole day of July 9 was clear and sunny weather. The water level dropped by 1.5 meters, fishermen on boats were fishing (Lituya Bay has always been a favorite place for avid fishermen). Towards evening, around 22:00 local time, a landslide that rolled into the water from a height of 910 meters, followed by huge stones and blocks of ice. The total weight of the mass was approximately 300 million cubic meters. The northern part of the Lituya Bay was completely flooded with water. At the same time, a giant pile of stones was thrown to the opposite side, as a result of which the entire green area of the Fairweather coast was destroyed.
A landslide of this magnitude provoked the appearance of a huge wave, the height of which was 524 meters! This is approximately a building of 200 floors! It was the largest and highest wave in the world. The gigantic force of the ocean water literally washed away Lituya Bay. The tidal wave picked up speed (by this time it had already accelerated to 160 km/h) and rushed towards Cenotaph Island. Terrible landslides simultaneously descended from the mountains to the water, carrying a column of dust and stones. The wave rose to such a size that the foot of the mountain disappeared under it.
Trees and greenery covering the mountain slopes were uprooted and sucked into the water column. The tsunami continually rushed from side to side inside the bay, covering the points of the shallows and sweeping away the forest covers of the high northern mountains on its way. There is no trace left of the La Gaussi spit, which separated the waters of the bay and Gilbert Bay. After everything had calmed down, on the shore one could see a catastrophic crack in the ground, severe destruction and rubble. The buildings erected by the fishermen were completely destroyed. The scale of the disaster was impossible to assess.
This wave claimed the lives of about three hundred thousand people. Only the longboat managed to escape, which by some incredible miracle was thrown out of the bay and thrown over the sandbank. Once on the other side of the mountain, the fishermen were left without a vessel, but were rescued two hours later. The bodies of the fishermen of another longboat were carried away into the abyss of water. They were never found.
Another terrible tragedy
Terrible destruction remained after the tsunami on December 26, 2004 for residents of the Indian Ocean coast. A powerful shock in the ocean caused a disastrous wave. In the depths of the Pacific Ocean, near the island of Sumatra, a fracture of the earth's crust occurred, which provoked a displacement of the bottom over a distance of more than 1000 kilometers. The largest wave that has ever covered the coast was formed from this fault. At first its height was no more than 60 centimeters. But it accelerated, and now a 20-meter shaft was rushing at an insane, unprecedented speed of 800 kilometers per hour towards the islands of Sumatra and Thailand to the east of India and Sri Lanka - to the west! In eight hours, a terrible tsunami, unprecedented in history, flew over the entire coast of the Indian Ocean, and in 24 hours, the entire World Ocean!
The greatest destruction occurred on the shores of Indonesia. The tidal wave buried cities and regions tens of kilometers deep. The islands of Thailand have become a mass grave for tens of thousands of people. Residents of coastal areas had no chance of salvation, since the water blanket held the cities under it for more than 15 minutes. Huge loss of life resulted from the natural disaster. Economic losses were also impossible to calculate. More than 5 million residents were forced to leave their homes, more than one million needed help, and two million people needed new housing. International organizations responded and helped the victims in every possible way.
Disaster in Prince William Sound
Severe, irreparable losses were caused by an earthquake on March 27, 1964 in Prince William Sound (Alaska) measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale. It covered a huge area of 800,000 square kilometers. Such a powerful shock from a depth of more than 20 kilometers can be compared with a simultaneous explosion of 12 thousand atomic bombs! The western coast of the United States of America was significantly damaged, which was literally covered by a huge tsunami. The wave reached as far as Antarctica and Japan. Villages and towns, enterprises, and the city of Veldez were wiped off the face of the earth.
The wave swept away everything that came in its way: dams, concrete blocks, houses, buildings, ships in the port. The wave height reached 67 meters! This, of course, is not the largest wave in the world, but it brought a lot of destruction. Fortunately, the deadly stream claimed the lives of approximately 150 people. The number of victims could have been much higher, but due to the sparse population of these places, only 150 local residents died. Considering the area and gigantic power of the stream, they had no chance of survival.
Great East Japan Earthquake
One can only imagine what force of nature destroyed the shores of Japan and brought irreparable losses to its inhabitants. After this disaster, the consequences will be felt for many years. At the junction of the world's two largest lithospheric plates, an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale occurred, about twice the magnitude of the tremors caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake. A tragic event of enormous scale is also called the “Great East Japan Earthquake.” In just 20 minutes, a terrifying wave, the height of which exceeded 40 meters, reached the shores of Japan, where a large number of of people.
About 25 thousand people became victims of the tsunami. This was the largest wave in the history of the Easterners. But this was only the beginning of the disaster. The scale of the tragedy grew every hour after the attack with a powerful stream nuclear power plant"Fokusima-1". The power plant system went out of operating mode due to tremors and shock waves. The failure was followed by a meltdown of the reactors in the power units. Today, a zone within a radius of tens of kilometers is a zone of exclusion and disaster. About 400 thousand buildings and structures were destroyed, bridges were destroyed, railways, highways, airports, ports and shipping stations. It will take years to rebuild the country after the terrible disaster brought by the highest wave.
Disaster on the coast of Papua New Guinea
Another disaster struck the coast of Papua New Guinea in July 1998. The earthquake, measuring 7.1 on the measurement scale, triggered by a massive landslide, caused a wave more than 15 meters high, which killed more than 200 thousand people, leaving thousands more homeless on the island. Before the invasion of ocean water, there was a small bay here called Varupu, the waters of which washed two islands, where the Varupu people lived, worked and traded peacefully. Two powerful and unexpected impulses from underground occurred within 30 minutes of each other.
They set in motion a huge shaft, which caused strong waves, which wiped out several villages along a length of 30 kilometers from the face of New Guinea. Residents of seven more settlements needed medical care and were hospitalized. The sea level in the capital of New Guinea, Rabaul, rose by 6 centimeters. A tidal wave of such magnitude has never been observed before, although in this region local residents often suffer from disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes. A giant wave destroyed and carried under water an area of more than 100 square kilometers to a depth of 4 meters.
Tsunami in the Philippines
Exactly until August 16, 1976, the small island of Mindanao existed in the oceanic depression of Cotabato. It was the most southern, picturesque and exotic place among all the islands of the Philippines. Local residents could not at all predict that a terrible earthquake measuring 8 on the Richter scale would destroy this stunning place, washed by the seas on all sides. A huge force created a tsunami as a result of an earthquake.
The wave seemed to cut off the entire coastline of Mindanao. 5 thousand people who did not have time to escape died under the roof sea water. Approximately 2.5 thousand residents of the island were not found, 9.5 thousand received varying degrees of injury, more than 90 thousand lost their shelter and remained on the street. This was the strongest activity in the history of the Philippine Islands. Scientists who examined the details of the disaster found that the power of such a natural phenomenon caused movements of the water mass, which provoked a shift in the islands of Sulawesi and Borneo. It was the worst and most destructive event in the entire period of the existence of the island of Mindanao.
In December 2004, a photo of the largest wave in the world spread across all publications around the world. On December 26, an earthquake occurred in Asia, which resulted in a tsunami wave that killed more than 235 thousand people.
The media published photos of the destruction, assuring readers and television viewers that there had never been a big wave in the world. But the journalists were lying... Indeed, in terms of its destructive power, the 2004 tsunami is one of the deadliest. But the magnitude (height) of this wave is quite modest: it did not much exceed 15 meters. History knows of higher waves, about which one can say: “Yes, this is the largest wave in the world!”
Record breaking waves
Where are the biggest waves?
Scientists are confident that the highest waves are not caused by earthquakes (they often cause tsunamis), but by ground collapses. This is why high waves are most common:
... And other rogue waves
It's not just giant waves that are dangerous. There is a scarier variety: single rogue waves. They come out of nowhere, their height rarely exceeds 15 meters. But the pressure they exert on all objects encountered exceeds 100 tons per centimeter (ordinary waves “press” with a force of only 12 tons). These waves are practically not studied. We only know that it crushes oil rigs and ships like a sheet of ordinary paper.
When I read about the wave height caused by the tsunami in 1958, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I checked it once, twice. It's the same everywhere. No, they probably made a mistake with the comma, and everyone is copying each other. Or maybe in units of measurement?
Well, how could it be otherwise, do you think there could be a wave from a tsunami 524 meters high? HALF A KILOMETER!
Now we will find out what really happened there...
Here's what an eyewitness writes:
“After the first shock, I fell out of bed and looked towards the beginning of the bay, where the noise was coming from. The mountains trembled terribly, stones and avalanches rushed down. And the glacier in the north was especially striking; it is called the Lituya glacier. Usually, it is not visible from where I was anchored. People shake their heads when I tell them that I saw him that night. I can't help it if they don't believe me. I know that the glacier is not visible from where I was anchored in Anchorage Bay, but I also know that I saw it that night. The glacier rose into the air and moved forward until it became visible. He must have risen several hundred feet. I'm not saying it was just hanging in the air. But he was shaking and jumping like crazy. Large pieces of ice fell from its surface into the water. The glacier was six miles away, and I saw large chunks falling off it like a huge dump truck. This continued for some time - it is difficult to say how long - and then suddenly the glacier disappeared from view and a large wall of water rose above this place. The wave went in our direction, after which I was too busy to say what else was happening there.”
On July 9, 1958, an unusually severe disaster occurred in Lituya Bay in southeastern Alaska. In this bay, which extends more than 11 km into the land, geologist D. Miller discovered a difference in the age of trees on the hillside surrounding the bay. Based on tree rings, he estimated that over the past 100 years, waves with a maximum height of several hundred meters have occurred in the bay at least four times. Miller's conclusions were viewed with great distrust. And so, on July 9, 1958, a strong earthquake occurred on the Fairweather fault north of the bay, causing the destruction of buildings, the collapse of the coast, and the formation of numerous cracks. And a huge landslide on the mountainside above the bay caused a wave of record height (524 m), which swept through the narrow, fjord-like bay at a speed of 160 km/h.
Lituya is a fjord located on the Fairweather fault in the northeastern part of the Gulf of Alaska. It is a T-shaped bay 14 kilometers long and up to three kilometers wide. The maximum depth is 220 m. The narrow entrance to the bay is only 10 m deep. Two glaciers descend into Lituya Bay, each of which is about 19 km long and up to 1.6 km wide. During the century preceding the events described, waves over 50 meters high had already been observed in Lituya several times: in 1854, 1899 and 1936.
The 1958 earthquake caused a subaerial rockfall at the mouth of the Gilbert Glacier in Lituya Bay. As a result of this landslide, more than 30 million cubic meters rocks collapsed into the bay and led to the formation of a megatsunami. This disaster killed 5 people: three on Hantaak Island and two more were washed away by a wave in the bay. In Yakutat, the only permanent locality near the epicenter, infrastructure facilities were damaged: bridges, docks and oil pipelines.
After the earthquake, a study was carried out of a subglacial lake located northwest of the bend of the Lituya Glacier at the very beginning of the bay. It turned out that the lake dropped by 30 meters. This fact served as the basis for another hypothesis of the formation of a giant wave more than 500 meters high. Probably, during the glacier's descent, a large volume of water entered the bay through an ice tunnel under the glacier. However, the runoff of water from the lake could not be the main cause of the megatsunami.
A huge mass of ice, stones and earth (volume of about 300 million cubic meters) rushed down from the glacier, exposing the mountain slopes. The earthquake destroyed numerous buildings, cracks appeared in the ground, and the coastline slid. The moving mass fell on the northern part of the bay, filled it up, and then crawled onto the opposite slope of the mountain, tearing off the forest cover from it to a height of more than three hundred meters. The landslide generated a giant wave that literally swept Lituya Bay towards the ocean. The wave was so great that it swept entirely over the entire sandbank at the mouth of the bay.
Eyewitnesses to the disaster were people on board the ships that dropped anchor in the bay. The terrible shock threw them all out of their beds. Jumping to their feet, they could not believe their eyes: the sea rose. “Giant landslides, raising clouds of dust and snow in their path, began to run along the slopes of the mountains. Soon their attention was drawn completely fantastic spectacle: The mass of ice of the Lituya Glacier, located far to the north and usually hidden from view by the peak that rises at the entrance to the bay, seemed to rise above the mountains and then collapse majestically into the waters of the inner bay. It all seemed like some kind of nightmare. In front of the shocked people's eyes she rose up huge wave, which swallowed up the foot of the northern mountain. After that, she swept across the bay, tearing trees off the mountain slopes; falling like a water mountain onto the island of Cenotaph... rolled over the highest point of the island, rising 50 m above sea level. This entire mass suddenly plunged into the waters of the narrow bay, causing a huge wave, the height of which apparently reached 17-35 m. Its energy was so great that the wave rushed furiously across the bay, sweeping the slopes of the mountains. In the inner basin, the impact of the waves on the shore was probably very strong. The slopes of the northern mountains facing the bay are exposed: where used to grow up dense forest, now there were bare rocks; This pattern was observed at altitudes of up to 600 meters.
One longboat was lifted high, easily carried across the sandbar and dropped into the ocean. At that moment, when the longboat was carried over the sandbank, the fishermen on it saw below them standing trees. The wave literally threw people across the island into the open sea. During a nightmare ride on a giant wave, the boat pounded against trees and debris. The longboat sank, but the fishermen miraculously survived and were rescued two hours later. Of the other two longboats, one safely withstood the wave, but the other sank, and the people on it went missing.
Miller found that the trees growing at the upper edge of the exposed area, just below 600 m above the bay, were bent and broken, their fallen trunks pointing towards the top of the mountain, but the roots were not torn from the soil. Something pushed these trees up. The enormous force that accomplished this could not have been anything other than the top of a gigantic wave that swept over the mountain on that July evening in 1958.”
Mr. Howard J. Ulrich, in his yacht, which is called "Edri", entered the waters of Lituya Bay about eight in the evening and anchored in nine meters of water in a small cove on the southern shore. Howard says that suddenly the yacht began to rock violently. He ran out onto the deck and saw how in the northeastern part of the bay the rocks began to move due to the earthquake and a huge block of rock began to fall into the water. About two and a half minutes after the earthquake, he heard a deafening sound from the destruction of rock.
“We definitely saw that the wave came from Gilbert Bay, just before the earthquake ended. But at first it was not a wave. At first it was more like an explosion, as if the glacier was splitting into pieces. The wave grew from the surface of the water, at first it was almost invisible, who would have thought that then the water would rise to a height of half a kilometer.”
Ulrich said that he observed the entire process of development of the wave, which reached their yacht in a very a short time- something like two and a half or three minutes since she was first noticed. “Since we didn’t want to lose the anchor, we pulled out the entire anchor chain (about 72 meters) and started the engine. Halfway between the northeastern edge of Lituya Bay and Cenotaf Island, a thirty-meter-high wall of water could be seen that stretched from one shore to the other. When the wave approached the northern part of the island, it split into two parts, but after passing the southern part of the island, the wave became one again. It was smooth, only there was a small ridge on top. When this mountain of water approached our yacht, its front was quite steep and its height was from 15 to 20 meters. Before the wave arrived at the place where our yacht was located, we did not feel any drop in the water or other changes, with the exception of a slight vibration that was transmitted through the water from the tectonic processes that began to operate during the earthquake. As soon as the wave approached us and began to lift our yacht, the anchor chain crackled violently. The yacht was carried towards the southern shore and then, on the reverse course of the wave, towards the center of the bay. The top of the wave was not very wide, from 7 to 15 meters, and the trailing front was less steep than the leading one.
As the giant wave swept past us, the surface of the water returned to its normal level, however, we could observe a lot of turbulent eddies around the yacht, as well as chaotic waves six meters high that moved from one side of the bay to the other. These waves did not create any noticeable movement of water from the mouth of the bay to its northeastern part and back.”
After 25-30 minutes the surface of the bay calmed down. Near the banks one could see many logs, branches and uprooted trees. All this rubbish slowly drifted towards the center of Lituya Bay and towards its mouth. In fact, during the entire incident, Ulrich did not lose control of the yacht. When the Edri approached the entrance to the bay at 11 pm, a normal current could be observed there, which is usually caused by the daily ebb of ocean water.
Other eyewitnesses to the disaster, the Swenson couple on a yacht called the Badger, entered Lituya Bay around nine in the evening. First, their ship approached Cenotaf Island, and then returned to Anchorage Bay on the northern shore of the bay, not far from its mouth (see map). The Svensons anchored at a depth of about seven meters and went to bed. William Swenson's sleep was interrupted by strong vibrations from the yacht's hull. He ran to the control room and began to time what was happening. A little over a minute after William first felt the vibration, and probably just before the end of the earthquake, he looked towards the northeastern part of the bay, which was visible against the backdrop of Cenotaph Island. The traveler saw something that he initially mistook for the Lituya glacier, which rose into the air and began to move towards the observer. “It seemed like this mass was solid, but it jumped and swayed. Large pieces of ice were constantly falling into the water in front of this block.” After a short time, “the glacier disappeared from view, and instead of it a large wave appeared in that place and went in the direction of the La Gaussi spit, just where our yacht was anchored.” In addition, Svenson noticed that the wave flooded the shore at a very noticeable height.
When the wave passed Cenotaf Island, its height was about 15 meters in the center of the bay and gradually decreased near the shores. She passed the island approximately two and a half minutes after she was first seen, and reached the yacht Badger another eleven and a half minutes (approximately). Before the wave arrived, William, like Howard Ulrich, did not notice any drop in water level or any turbulent phenomena.
The yacht "Badger", which was still at anchor, was lifted by a wave and carried towards the La Gaussie spit. The stern of the yacht was below the crest of the wave, so that the position of the vessel resembled a surfboard. Svenson looked at that moment at the place where the trees growing on the La Gaussy spit should have been visible. At that moment they were hidden by water. William noted that above the tops of the trees there was a layer of water equal to approximately two times the length of his yacht, about 25 meters. Having passed the La Gaussi spit, the wave subsided very quickly.
In the place where Swenson's yacht was moored, the water level began to drop, and the ship hit the bottom of the bay, remaining afloat not far from the shore. 3-4 minutes after the impact, Swenson saw that water continued to flow over the La Gaussie Spit, carrying logs and other debris from forest vegetation. He wasn't sure it wasn't a second wave that could have carried the yacht across the spit into the Gulf of Alaska. Therefore, the Swenson couple left their yacht, moving onto a small boat, from which they were picked up by a fishing boat a couple of hours later.
There was a third vessel in Lituya Bay at the time of the incident. It was anchored at the entrance to the bay and was sunk by a huge wave. None of the people on board survived; two were believed to have died.
What happened on July 9, 1958? That evening, a huge rock fell into the water from a steep cliff overlooking the northeastern shore of Gilbert Bay. The collapse area is marked in red on the map. The impact of an incredible mass of stones with very high altitude caused an unprecedented tsunami, which wiped out from the face of the earth all life that was located along the entire coast of Lituya Bay right up to the La Gaussi spit. After the wave passed along both shores of the bay, there was not only no vegetation left, but even no soil; there was bare rock on the surface of the shore. The damaged area is shown in yellow on the map.
The numbers along the shore of the bay indicate the height above sea level of the edge of the damaged land area and approximately correspond to the height of the wave that passed here.
What causes the appearance of most waves in the oceans and seas, about the destructive energy of waves and about the most gigantic waves and the largest tsunamis that man has ever seen.
The highest wave
Most often, waves are generated by the wind: air moves the surface layers of the water column at a certain speed. Some waves can accelerate up to 95 km/h, while the wave can be up to 300 meters long, such waves travel huge distances across the ocean, but most often they kinetic energy extinguished, consumed even before they reach land. If the wind subsides, then the waves become smaller and smoother.The formation of waves in the ocean follows certain patterns.
The height and length of the wave depend on the wind speed, the duration of its influence, and the area covered by the wind. There is a correspondence: the greatest height of a wave is one-seventh of its length. For example, a strong breeze generates waves up to 3 meters high, an extensive hurricane - on average up to 20 meters. And these are truly monstrous waves, with roaring foam caps and other special effects.
The highest normal wave of 34 meters was recorded in the Agulhas Current (South Africa) in 1933 by sailors on board the American ship Ramapo. Waves of this height are called “rogue waves”: even a large ship can easily get lost in the gaps between them and die.
In theory, the height of normal waves can reach 60 meters, but such waves have not yet been recorded in practice.
In addition to the usual wind origin, there are other mechanisms of wave formation. The cause and epicenter of the birth of a wave can be an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, a sharp change in the coastline (landslides), human activity (for example, nuclear weapons testing) and even the fall of large celestial bodies - meteorites - into the ocean.
The biggest wave
This is a tsunami - a serial wave that is caused by some powerful impulse. The peculiarity of tsunami waves is that they are quite long; the distance between the crests can reach tens of kilometers. Therefore, in the open ocean, a tsunami does not pose a particular danger, since the height of the waves is on average no more than a few centimeters, in record cases - a meter and a half, but the speed of their propagation is simply unimaginable, up to 800 km / hour. From a ship on the open sea they are not noticeable at all. A tsunami acquires destructive power as it approaches the coast: reflection from the coast leads to a compression of the wavelength, but the energy does not disappear anywhere. Accordingly, its (wave) amplitude, that is, height, increases. It is easy to conclude that such waves can reach much higher heights than wind waves. 
The worst tsunamis are caused by significant disturbances in the topography of the seabed, such as tectonic faults or shifts, due to which billions of tons of water begin to abruptly move tens of thousands of kilometers at the speed of a jet aircraft. Disasters occur when this entire mass slows down on the shore, and its colossal energy first goes to increase in height, and ultimately collapses onto the land with all its power, a wall of water.
The most tsunami-hazardous places are bays with high banks. These are real tsunami traps. And the worst thing is that a tsunami almost always comes suddenly: in appearance, the situation at sea can be indistinguishable from low tide or high tide, an ordinary storm, people do not have time or do not even think about evacuating, and suddenly they are overtaken by a giant wave. Not many places have developed a warning system.
Territories with increased seismic activity are areas of particular risk in our time. No wonder the name of this natural phenomenon is of Japanese origin.
The worst tsunami in Japan
The islands are regularly attacked by waves of different calibers, and among them there are truly gigantic ones that entail human casualties. An earthquake off the east coast of Honshu in 2011 caused a tsunami with wave heights of up to 40 meters. The earthquake is estimated to be the strongest in the recorded history of Japan. The waves struck along the entire coast, together with the earthquake they claimed the lives of more than 15 thousand people, many thousands were missing. 
Other highest wave in the history of Japan, it fell in 1741 on the west of Hokkaido as a result of a volcanic eruption; its height is approximately 90 meters.
The biggest tsunami in the world
In 2004, on the islands of Sumatra and Java, a tsunami caused strong earthquake in the Indian Ocean, turned into a major disaster. According to various sources, from 200 to 300 thousand people died - a third of a million victims! To date, this particular tsunami is considered the most destructive in history. 
And the record holder for wave height is named “Lituya”. This tsunami, which swept through Lituya Bay in Alaska at a speed of 160 km/h in 1958, was triggered by a giant landslide. The wave height was estimated at 524 meters.
Meanwhile, the sea is not always dangerous. There are “friendly” seas. For example, not a single river flows into the Red Sea, but it is the cleanest in the world. .
Subscribe to our channel in Yandex.Zen
Monster waves, white waves, rogue waves, wandering waves - all this is the name of one terrible phenomenon that can take a ship by surprise. TravelAsk will tell you about the world's biggest waves.
What is special about giant waves?
Robber waves are fundamentally different from tsunamis (and we will also definitely tell you about the largest tsunamis). The latter come into action as a result of natural geographical disasters: earthquakes or landslides. A giant wave appears suddenly, and nothing predicts it.
And moreover, they long time were considered fiction. Mathematicians even tried to calculate their height and dynamics. However, the cause of the giant waves has never been established.
Giant wave recorded for the first time
Such an anomaly was first recorded on January 1, 1995 at oil platform"Dropner" in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. The height of the wave reached 25.6 meters, and it was called the Dropner wave. Subsequently, space satellites were used to conduct research. And within three weeks, another 25 giant waves were recorded. In theory, such waves can reach 60 meters.
The highest rogue waves in history
The largest wave in history was recorded in the Agulhas Current (South Africa) in 1933 by sailors on board the American ship Ramapo. Its height was 34 meters.
In the mid-Atlantic, the Italian transatlantic liner Michelangelo was struck by a rogue wave in April 1966. As a result, two people were washed out to sea and 50 were injured. The ship itself was also damaged.
.jpg)
In September 1995, the Queen Elizabeth 2 liner recorded a 29-meter wandering wave in the North Atlantic. However, the British transatlantic ship turned out to be not timid: the ship tried to “ride” the giant that appeared right ahead.
In 1980, an encounter with a white wave ended in tragedy for the English cargo ship Derbyshire. The wave broke through the main cargo hatch and flooded the hold. 44 people died. It happened off the coast of Japan, the ship sank.
On February 15, 1982, in the North Atlantic, a huge wave covered a drilling platform owned by Mobil Oil. She broke out the windows and flooded the control room. As a result, the platform capsized, killing 84 crew members. This is a sad record to date for the number of deaths from a rogue wave.
In 2000, the British cruise ship Oriana was hit by a 21-meter wave in the North Atlantic. Before this, the liner received a distress signal from a yacht that was damaged by the same wave.
In 2001, still in the same North Atlantic, the luxury tourist liner Bremen was hit by a giant wave. As a result, a window on the bridge was broken, causing the ship to drift for two hours.
Dangers on the lakes
Stray waves can also appear on lakes. So, on one of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior, the Three Sisters meet - these are three giant waves that follow each other. The ancient Indian tribes who lived in this territory also knew about them. True, according to legend, the waves appeared due to the movement of a giant sturgeon that lived at the bottom. The sturgeon was never discovered, but the Three Sisters appear here and now. In 1975, the bulk carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, whose length was 222 meters, sank precisely because of a collision with these waves.