Today I saw an article on my news feed about the peculiar phenomenon and I was quite intrigued. It looks really weird to see waves in a grid pattern so I wanted to know more about it. In navigation it is also called cross sea and it turns out to be actually pretty common so I wanted to talk to you about it.
How it forms
The most common waves on the sea are caused by the wind and the period, height and length of the waves are mainly determined by the following features:
- Wind speed
- Wind duration
- Fetching area
When wind conditions change, the waves continue to go on due to their momentum. This makes it very possible that waves from a previous wind regime still propagate in a regime that does not support the type (direction, size...) of waves. Given this possibility, we can also expect that waves from multiple wind regimes collide and interfere with each other and this is what occurs in cross sea when the angles of incoming waves is large enough.
Also when two weather systems are far away from each other, the propagating waves can interfere at a large distance from their original origin resulting in cross sea.
Why it is dangerous
Besides being a nice sight, it is also considerably dangerous for boats navigating on the waters. As boats tackle waves best when they fare perpendicular to the waves, this cannot be guaranteed in cross seas as waves come from two directions.
The effect is only temporary since one of the two wave systems will dissipate but still a large percentage of all accidents happen under such conditions.
Sources
http://www.waitwow.com/grid-waves-along-french-coastline/
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This look really interesting and beautiful at the same time, i never seen anything like this before. Do you know if these types of waves are natural ?
It's all in the text if you want to know, completely natural ☺️
I think i understood now , Thank you
Thanks for featuring me on geopolis bro.
Why no @steemstem tag? This is worthy of #steemstem, I think.
There is a steemstem tag (last one), But apparently they didn't think it was worthy 😟
😊 It's aight, @geopolis will get there too 👍