Hurricane Ivan generated giant waves, study finds

[steve2470]

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hurricane Ivan, which caused a swathe of destruction across the Caribbean last September before crashing into the U.S. Gulf coast, generated ocean waves more than 90 feet high, researchers said on Thursday.

They may have been the tallest waves ever measured with modern instruments, suggesting that prior estimates for maximum hurricane wave heights are too low, William Teague of the Naval Research Laboratory in Stennin Space Center, Mississippi and colleagues reported.

"We measured a 91-footer," Teague told Science, which published the study.

A wave that big would snap a ship in two or dwarf a 10-floor building, Teague said.

And the sensors may have missed the largest waves, which the authors estimate had crest-to-trough wave heights exceeding 40 meters or 130 feet, the researchers said.

Such giant waves disintegrated before they ever touched land, the researchers wrote in the journal Science.

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