Day 127 of the eruption, and reportage seems focused on recovery.
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Hurricane Norman still at 120 MPH did, thankfully, did veer a bit north, and will miss the Hawaiian Islands. However, right behind is Olivia, where many models show a path right over Hawaii, albeit only as a tropical storm.
It occurred to me that Peahi (means wave in Hawaiian), better known as Jaws (named in 1975 for the shark in the film), would be primed for record wave heights. Magicseaweed shows how high, and the peak from Norman is today at 18 feet, with Olivia next week Wednesday showing a secondary height of 28 feet. The really big waves come from December to March. The idea of using a personal watercraft like a jet ski to tow the surfer was invented here in 1992.
While waves higher than 70 feet were measured at Jaws, in 2016, Aaron Gold felt he actually surfed the largest wave ever at Jaws...50 feet. Another article said ten times Gold's board length of eight feet, or 80 feet.
One experience of these big wave surfers is almost dying. Here is Gold's account of a wipeout in Fiji.
Which leads me to an article in the August issue of Scientific American: Monster Waves. Nazare, Portugal is where world records are now made. Fly to Lisbon, rent a car and drive an hour and a half to Nazare Canyon.
Garret McNamara of North Shore Hawaii published Hound of the Sea, where he writes about the world record he set at Nazare of 78 feet in 2011. However, read about his encounter with death back home in Waimea Bay. First, he breaks a rib, but then, after a toke of marijuana, returns and almost gets killed for a second time.
The Scientific American article reports on the current record holder, Rodrigo Koxa of Brazil, beginning with his fears and how his first time at Nazare in 2014 he almost drowned. In 2017 he successfully prevailed on an 80-foot wave. Watch Koxa on that wave:
But in 2007 McNamara supposedly surfed a 300-foot calving glacier in Alaska and in 2013 a 100-foot wave at Nazare.
Well, anyway, he thought that 2013 wave was bigger than his 2011 then record, and the following graphic was published in 2016 (before Koxa):
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In the Atlantic, Hurricane Florence, now a Category 4 at 130 MPH, will strengthen and weaken and strengthen and... But, the current predicted path is landfall on the Eastern Seaboard.
No hurricane has yet to make landfall over the USA this year, but if Florence succeeds, it will be about a week from today. And, I leave on Monday for eight days in New York City. I get the feeling that I'm a magnet for ocean storms.
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