New Scientist has an article on rogue waves here.
It’s cool to see art validated by science.
Science imitating art or art imitating science?
Science validating art. Rogue waves like that were regularly reported by sailors but used to be dismissed by scientists until one was captured on film. But now they’ve shown how it can happen.
Thanks for linking to this!
A very cool experiment.
What is “crossing sea conditions”? article uses the term but doesn’t explain it?
From context, sounds like two separate waves that intersect while traveling in different directions.
Slight hijack
I heard and interesting theory about Hokusai’s wave. If you flip the image horizontally it looks a lot more menacing. Try it, it really does. However, if you show that flipped image to someone from Japan they will say the opposite, the flipped image is more benign than the original. The proposed explanation is to do with the direction in which we read. With our left-to-right script we perceive things to be travelling left-to-right more naturally than right-to-left, so for the flipped image our sense of the boat crashing against the wave is enhanced. For the original it is easier to imagine the boat racing away from the wave. The opposite is true for those who write right-to-left. Hokusai understood this dynamic on some level and made his image more powerful for his culture.
Wasn’t Japanese originally written vertically?
Yes, but the columns were written right-to-left.
That is how many books are still printed in Japan, btw.
Very cool article. I am still not quite clear how they are getting 120deg in a circular tank- adn the waves themselves are also curved obviously.
However, I witnessed a rogue wave or two on Maui about 8 years ago- the week before the big tsunami warning. It was the craziest thing ever as how unbelievably sudden and irregular it was. I was playing with my kids (in their inflatable tubes) in 1-2 foot swells in 2-4 feet of water and had been for hours just lolling in and out with the swells. All of a sudden (my back was turned to the ocean- NEVER AGAIN), we got pulled 20-30 feet outward and where we had been playing was completely water free- I grabbed one tube tighter in each hand. It literally felt like we were on a water wall as we could see downward into this sand. And then the water pushed back in- and we flew/tumbled all the way up the beach and into the bushes at the top of the beach. I turned sideways and gave my older child a push and told her to run to the pool (which she amazingly did) as I sacrificed all momentum and energy to getting her free of the water. My younger and I got pulled back into the surf and went out as far as we had come from to begin with- I and the floaty kept his head above water. We then came back up the beach but I was more prepared and ran out and literally through the bushes. I had him run for the pool and went back to help others.
Two waves and instantly back to the 1-2 foot swells. I am literally not able to judge but this water went through the bushes and twenty feet across the grass- so 20-25 foot wave? Not weather related- not tsunami related- just a random rogue wave.
People on the beach had been literally rolled over by the water- cell phones, sunglasses, towels, sandals all missing forever. My wife’s 80 year old grandmother was a bit deeper to start than us but she was still quite shaken. My kids thought it was the greatest thing ever- meanwhile, I and all adults are freaking out, recovering debris, and cleaning up. We remember it very well as every time we are near the ocean- DO NOT TURN YOUR BACK ON THE OCEAN for more than a second or two.
The photo and painting in the linked article are, in my mind, amazingly similar. If Hokusai actually saw a wave that looked like, that he must have a photographic memory to get it just right in the painting.
Pretty much my thought: I’m familiar with the painting, but I always thought it was stylized. Apparently it isn’t.
I worked with a young guy from Hawaii. He said that when the conditions were right they used to go down to the beach to watch the tourists being swept out to sea…