Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 March 1910 — HEIGHT OF WAVES. [ARTICLE]

HEIGHT OF WAVES.

Average 20 Feet, Although «Tops ping Sea*” of GO Are Known. Measurements and estimates from mariners and observers at sea indicate that the average height of su, the waves running in a gale in the open ocean is about twenty feet, but the height of theindividual waves is often found to vary in the proportion of one to two, says the Scientific American, and there is, in fact, in a fairly regular sea a not inconsiderable range of size among the waves. In any statement that we may make as to the size of waves in a gale on the ocean we should not neglect the mention of the larger waves that occur at fairly frequent intervals. These, which may be termed the ordinary maximum waves, are perhaps what seamen really refer to when they state the size of the waves met with during a storm at sea. “About forty feet” is a common estimate of the height of the larger waves in a severe gale on the North Atlantic, and this estimate is really not incompatible with a recorded average of a little more than twenty feet. It is difficult to say what may be the greatest height of the solitary or nearly solitary waves that are from time to time reported by mariners. The casual combination of the numerous independent undulations running on the sea presumably sometimes produces two or three succeeding ridges or two or three neighboring domes of water of considerably greater dimensions than those of the, ordinary maximum waves of a storm. Although these large cumulative waves may be frequently produced, yet they will be comparatively seldom observed, because so small a fraction of the ocean’s surface is at one time under observation. There are seemingly reliable accounts of cases in which these “topping seas” have reached the height of sixty feet.