Earlier this year, a video out of Portugal looked almost too ridiculous to be real: surfers attempting to ride an enormous, raging river wave while what appeared to be an entire lagoon emptied toward the Atlantic.
Now we know more about what actually happened.
Here’s Portuguese surfer Luís Perloiro explaining the situation, linked here, and below:
The scene unfolded at Lagoa de Albufeira in Sesimbra, south of Lisbon, during February’s relentless storms. Heavy rain had filled the lagoon until it broke through the sandy barrier separating it from the ocean, creating a violent outflow and one of the most intimidating novelty waves we’ve ever seen.
Perloiro was there with Francisco Mittermayer and Tiago Stock.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much water moving,” Perloiro wrote afterward.
That may actually be underselling it.
“The Albufeira lagoon opened to the sea last night and we even arrived in time to surf a bit,” Perloiro explained. “I don’t know how many cubic meters of water were passing through there per second, but it wasn’t a small amount.”
Footage shows an enormous wall of brown, turbulent water standing up in the channel as the surfers try to hold position. Eventually, the sheer volume wins. One surfer loses control and gets sucked down the outflow toward open ocean while others scramble against a current that appears nearly impossible to fight.
Related: Watch: Historic 6-Foot Boat Wave Produces Freakishly Perfect Barrels
Portugal was getting hammered at the time by successive storms, flooding and landslides. Perloiro described it as “non-stop storms for the last 10 days,” adding: “Lately, it’s been mostly about different and less friendly waves.”
That certainly qualifies.
Interestingly, all that moving water later dumped and rearranged huge amounts of sand outside the lagoon, creating a remarkably good temporary surf bank that Perloiro returned to months later.
But the original river session was something else entirely.
Call it surfing, river surfing, or simply questionable decision-making.
Whatever it was, they were fortunate everyone made it back in one piece.
Related: Portugal River Wave Sweeps Surfers Out to Sea During ‘Devastating Crisis’ (Video)
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