Just measuring a wave’s height can cause a storm
When confronted by a wall of water off the Atlantic coast of Portugal, others might furiously try to escape. But surfer Sebastian Steudtner instead paddled straight towards it, convinced he had met his destiny
“I knew it”, is how the 37-year-old German recounted his immediate feelings at the time before instructing the jet ski he was being towed behind off the coast of the surfing hotbed of Nazaré to “get me this wave now . Somehow, he managed to stay alive – never mind afloat.
That was 18 months ago. This week, the wave has been confirmed by Guinness World Records as the largest ever ridden by a man – at 86ft, it is 6ft higher than the previous record (set at the same beach in 2017).
It has taken so long because measuring waves is a process that takes one into choppy waters.
Judges will often use the height of the surfer to compare against the wave, but critics of this method claim that surfers will very rarely be standing straight, therefore compromising the accuracy.
To measure Steudtner’s wave, judges used his lower leg as a yardstick, stressing the limb in question cannot be bent. Another means of measurement, called the Hawaiian scale, is made by devising an estimate from behind the wave.
Then there is the Bascom method, devised by US oceanographer Willard Newell Bascom, which measures waves by standing on the beach and estimating the distance between the crest of the wave and level of the sea.
To rise above such fractious debate, Weather Watch prefers the tried and tested technique beloved by newspapers: namely, measuring things using spurious comparisons to make them seem as large as possible.
So Steudtner’s 86ft wave is equivalent to roughly six doubledecker buses, or 14 silverback gorillas standing on each other’s shoulders. The 18 months it took to measure it meanwhile, well, you might have built a skyscraper in that time. *