Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Hurricane Ivan produced monsterous waves. When Ivan was making his run towards Alabama last year, I noted some big waves that it generated.  I did not realize, however, just how big some of them were: The Ten Storey Mexican Wave (The Times) WHEN seafarers described them in tones of awe, sceptical landlubbers dismissed them as fantasy. Now scientists believe that they have evidence of the largest wave yet recorded. It happened on September 16 last year when Hurricane Ivan stormed across the Gulf of Mexico and tore into the coast of Alabama, accompanied by 130mph winds and storm surges 8ft high. While still out at sea, oceanographers report, the hurricane also produced a series of giant waves, one of which stood 91ft (27m) from crest to trough, the height of a ten-storey building and a new world record for a wave recorded by instruments. But science, like old salts’ tales, is fallible. The seabed instruments that measured the surge were turned off at the moment the winds reached their peak, and scientists from the Naval Research Laboratory at Stennis Space Centre, Mississippi, have had to employ a computer model to predict that, while they were not looking, at the height of the storm the wave reached 131ft. By comparison, the tsunami wave that swept across the Indian Ocean last December stood about 30ft high as it hit shorelines, although in some parts of Indonesia it was reported to have reached 65ft... Incredible stuff. Weather comment []11:28:57 PM   trackback []