I think sneakers are better classified as "rogue waves" than as solitons. This Wikipedia citation has a pretty good description of sneakers on the high seas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freak_wave Matt Broze's excellent description of some of the coastal bottom topography conditions which can generate enormous waves _at_a_coastline_ handles waves of that origin. I think what Craig is getting at is a wave that is itself larger than its surrounding cousins, _away_from_ coastline effects (and then, of course, _also_ larger when it gets to a coastline). The citation above may help distinguish these two classes of large waves. Waves of Matt's description are attributed to "diffractive focusing" in the Wikipedia citation above. Waves of nonlinear origin are thought to be very different. Scroll down several screens in the citation to get some terrific descriptions of encounters on the high seas. They will really scare your socks off! Finally, this reference within the Wiki article has a cool animation of how one of these rogue waves can "stand out" amongst smaller ones, as well as a great photo of Matt's diffractive focusing origin: http://www.math.uio.no/~karstent/waves/index_en.html -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Jan 21 2008 - 01:22:24 PST
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0 : Thu Aug 21 2025 - 16:31:28 PDT