100 Foot High Waves Found in the Middle of the Ocean

On Twitter, a post alarmed me enough to chase down the source, it was from my traveling bud Johnny Jet. He was Tweeting from ITB Berlin, the world’s largest travel show. Some day, in my post-cafe career, I’ll go to this fantastic huge show and meet thousands of other travel pros.

But that Tweet is my topic. It was about monster waves. The BBC reported that a satellite survey of the Atlantic has found up to ten 81-100 foot-high waves over a two-month period. Two cruise ships were almost sunk just recently, with water breaking the glass in the upper part of the ship and one losing navigation and drifting for a few days after the wave hit.

The satellites measured two-by-three kilometer swaths of sea, and there among the billions of waves they found ten megawaves. Imagine a wave towering three stories high….imagine being on a ship and having that wave eclipse the bow and reach right up into the bridge. Waves like this explain the 200 or more ships every year that disappear, go missing, and sink.

It appears now that the reason that two giant ships disappear each week is that they are hit with one of these 81 foot waves. Maybe I won’t take that cruise after all.