At 3:00 p.m. on New Year’s Day in 1995, work stopped on the deck of the Norwegian Draupner oil platform, which stood isolated out in the middle of the tempestuous North Sea. The wind had grown too strong, the waves roiled below, and it was no longer safe to be outside.
But one wave dwarfed the others. It measured 84-feet tall — about two and a half times the height of a telephone pole — and was thereafter named the “Draupner wave.” Fortunately, the monstrous swell didn’t reach the platform’s deck.
The Draupner wave was the first scientific evidence of a rare rogue or freak wave, which is a wave that appears suddenly and measures at least twice as tall as the surrounding waves. These fleeting, colossal phenomena are thought to be possible culprits for the still-unexplained sinking of ships in the open ocean. Read more…