On November 17, 2020, a buoy off Vancouver Island, Canada, encountered something almost unimaginable: a rogue wave measuring 58 feet from trough to crest.
Nobody filmed the actual encounter. But an extraordinary computer simulation from MarineLabs, the company whose buoy captured the measurements, offers a frightening look at what unfolded.
In the animation, a small yellow marker represents the buoy as a wireframe ocean surface rises and falls around it. Then, around the 42-second mark, a mountainous swell surges far above its neighbors. For an instant, an otherwise rough sea looks completely out of scale.
And here’s the wild part: it wasn’t even the tallest rogue wave ever documented.
That distinction is often associated with the famous 85-foot Draupner wave, which struck an offshore oil platform near Norway in 1995. But the Ucluelet wave was different.
The surrounding sea had a significant wave height of approximately 20 feet. At 58 feet, the freak wave was nearly three times that height, making it exceptional even by rogue-wave standards.
“Proportionally, the Ucluelet wave is likely the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded,” University of Victoria physicist Johannes Gemmrich recently told ScienceAlert.
Related: Watch: 20-Foot Rogue Wave Capsizes Yacht in the Middle of Pacific Ocean
“The unpredictability of rogue waves, and the sheer power of these ‘walls of water’ can make them incredibly dangerous to marine operations and the public,” said MarineLabs CEO Scott Beatty. “Capturing this once-in-a-millennium wave, right in our backyard, is a thrilling indicator of the power of coastal intelligence to transform marine safety.”
The buoy recorded the phenomenon about four miles offshore from Ucluelet, British Columbia. Researchers published their findings in Scientific Reports in 2022, estimating that a wave this extreme relative to surrounding seas might occur only once every 1,300 years.
Rogue waves generally occur when wave energy briefly concentrates into an unusually large crest. They were once dismissed as sailors’ folklore, until instruments began recording them.
No injuries or damage were reported from the Ucluelet event. But its measurements, and the unsettling simulation, offer a reminder that the ocean can produce a wave far larger than anyone expects.
And sometimes – perhaps thankfully – the only witness is a buoy.
Related: Towering Waves Slam Amtrak Train as Super El Niño Batters California (Video)
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