A four-story wall of water that only rises once in 300 years was recorded off the west coast of Canada. Some people blame waves like this for disappearances in the Bermuda Triangle.
Rogue waves can get strong enough to sink container ships and oil rigs. The Canadian water monster didn’t hurt anyone, but it did become a sensation, and it looks like we’re about to see even higher and more powerful rogue waves in the future.
The team at Marine Labs, the company that operates the buoy that got caught in the Ucluelet wave, couldn’t believe the data they saw. A huge force came out of the blue, pulled the buoy down, set it up to a peak, and then took it even deeper. They thought it must be a rogue wave, so they sent the data to a scientist at the University of Victoria who specializes in these phenomena.
After analysis, it was confirmed the data was not a technical mistake. The wave officially became the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded, measuring three times the height of the waves around it.
Scientists have reported seeing giant waves coming out of the blue for centuries, but for a long time, no one really believed them. Back in 1826, a French scientist and naval officer was crossing the Indian Ocean on his ship, the Astrolabe. They encountered a terrible storm and saw several waves over 98 feet tall, almost as tall as a 10-story building. The crew lost one of its members, but the surviving officers made it to land and shared what they saw. Back then, scientists were sure waves couldn’t be taller than 30 feet, and everyone took their story as an unintentional tall tale.
Over a century later, a cargo ship, the MS München, mysteriously disappeared. People believed it to be unsinkable, just like the Titanic, so it was a real shock that all that was left of it was one lifeboat. When experts analyzed the damage, they concluded it must have been hit by a wave that was around 65 feet high.
Witnesses shared many other stories of giant waves coming out of nowhere, but scientists officially recognized the first rogue wave only in 1995. It went down in history as the Draupner wave or the New Year’s wave. This monster on the North Sea was 84 feet tall and hit the Norwegian gas platform Draupner on New Year’s Day. It was twice as large as the waves surrounding it.
The rig was built to withstand waves up to 64 feet tall and had the most advanced sensors for its time. The wave wasn’t like any other type they had studied before, so they had to admit rogue waves were real and gave them an official definition: a wave more than twice as tall as others around it. They can pop up lightning fast in a stormy sea or show up out of nowhere in calm waters. These waves have steep sides and a deep trough below, looking like a wall of water rising out of the sea. They’re so intense that they can even swallow up rescue helicopters trying to do their job.
In 2007, America’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made a list of 50 historical maritime tragedies that were most likely caused by rogue waves. Some of the events on the list happen not in open water, but in lakes. Lake Superior has something known as “three sisters”—a series of three large waves that hit one after another. The second wave covers the ship’s decks before the first one is gone, and the third wave adds extra water, overloading the ship. There’s a theory that this phenomenon took down the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.
There are two main theories explaining how rogue waves happen. The first is the linear addition theory: imagine waves cruising through the ocean at their own speeds. When these waves cross paths, they team up and become stronger, turning into a rogue wave. The second is the nonlinear focusing theory, which says waves like to roll in groups and exchange energy when they spend time together. Sometimes this energy exchange turns into a rogue wave.
To predict the formation of these freaky waves, scientists would need an innovative radar system to keep a constant eye on the waves near a boat. They’d collect all the data and put it into a math model that creates a real-time picture of the ocean surface at that very moment. This model would need to do new calculations every five minutes, letting the crew know if any extreme waves were coming up in the next several minutes. Such a system doesn’t exist yet, but there is huge progress in this direction.
Scientists from the University of Melbourne went on an expedition to Antarctica and found that strong winds play a big role in the creation of rogue waves. It looks like they’re caused by a mix of strong winds and the random way waves move and interact with each other. This idea was tested in labs before, but now they’ve proven it happens in real oceans, too. The scientists used special 3D cameras that work like human eyes, taking lots of images in a row to create a detailed 3D picture of the ocean surface. It showed that rogue waves happen more often when waves are young, meaning they’re just starting to form and are more affected by the wind. When strong winds blow over young waves, they make them taller, longer, and faster, but not evenly. Some waves steal energy from nearby waves and grow much bigger, which is how rogue waves form. The scientists noticed these giant waves happened about once every six hours, and they recorded no rogue waves in calmer seas.
Scientists are concerned that rogue waves may happen more often in the future because there’s more energy in the atmosphere and ocean. They managed to recreate the famous Draupner wave in a lab for the first time in 2018. This helped them study these mysterious waves up close and showed that their secret is in how they form. When waves from different directions meet, they push the water upward, creating what’s called a partially standing wave or a crosswave. This can happen when two seas meet or when wind directions suddenly change, like during a hurricane. The study found that the bigger the angle between the meeting waves, the taller the crosswave becomes.
Normally, when a wave breaks, it forms a white foamy top and stops growing. But if a wave is formed by water coming from many directions, it can keep growing even after breaking. These special waves can grow to be twice as steep while breaking, and if you add up all the growth from waves coming together, they can become four times steeper than anyone thought was possible. This discovery could change the way we build things like wind turbines or oil platforms in the ocean to make them safe.
Rogue waves aren’t the same as tsunamis. Tsunamis happen when there’s a big shift in water, like an earthquake, volcanic eruption, or landslide. They mess with the entire water column. At sea, you might not even notice a tsunami cruising beneath you, but near the shore, as it hits shallow waters, those waves can shoot up to crazy heights. Rogue waves are formed at the surface level, although sometimes they can form deep below—these are called rogue internal waves.
Scientists now warn that a fault thought to be inactive for over 40 million years could unleash a magnitude 7.5 earthquake under a small sleepy town in Canada. If you trace your finger across a map of northwestern Canada, you’ll find Dawson City in the Yukon. It looks like a nice place to escape from civilization, with only about 1,600 residents. It’s quiet, remote, and famous for its gold rush past. In the late 1890s, Dawson City ballooned into a boom town almost overnight as prospectors chased gold. Today, the rush is long gone, but the town still looks the part with wooden boardwalks and saloon-style facades.
Beneath all of that is a fracture in the earth itself. Dawson City is located on top of what’s known as the Tintina Fault, a massive crack in the Earth’s crust that stretches for hundreds of miles toward Alaska. Until recently, scientists believed this zone had been inactive, but newer studies tell a different story.
Faults are giant cracks where two slabs of Earth’s crust meet. They’re always trying to slide past each other, but their jagged edges catch and lock. Pressure builds for decades, continuously bending and straining the rock. Then suddenly, the locked zone breaks and the slabs slip into a new position in just seconds. That abrupt lurch releases all the stored energy, sending seismic waves racing outward. The ground shaking consequence is called an earthquake.
Scientists say the ground on each side of Tintina has been trying to slide past itself for ages, but it’s stuck. That stuck zone has built up around 20 feet of strain—that’s how far the land would shift sideways if it all gave at once. If all that built-up tension snaps in one go, the result could be a magnitude 7.5 earthquake. The shaking can last up to 30 seconds or more, which is an eternity when the walls are swaying and the floor feels like it’s rolling under your feet. Roads might get a new zigzag pattern, and unreinforced buildings could decide to do the twist. If it happens in a Canadian winter, a simple power outage could turn into a survival horror adventure.
Being on soft soil is like sitting on wobbly jelly—it amplifies the shaking. Solid rock is a bit more stable, but it’s still dangerous. In Mexico in 2003, a 7.5 quake damaged over 43,000 homes, buckled roads, and cut power for miles. In Sulawesi in 2018, the same magnitude not only leveled buildings but triggered a tsunami and liquefaction, with whole neighborhoods swallowed as the ground turned to quicksand.
Most people don’t think of Canada as an earthquake country, but it actually gets around 5,000 quakes a year. However, they’re so small that you’d never feel them. The real hot spot is the West Coast near British Columbia, where people whisper about the infamous “Big One.” It refers to a future mega-thrust earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone, a massive fault that runs for 600 miles just offshore. Unlike Tintina’s sideways slip, Cascadia works by one tectonic plate shoving under another. For centuries, the North American plate has been bent upward like a spring. When it finally snaps, that’s a magnitude 9.0, more than 30 times stronger than a 7.5. We know it can happen because it already has. The last big one struck in 1700, launching a tsunami across the ocean that smacked Japan, where villagers recorded an orphan wave with no local quake to explain it.
Despite the size of the fault, the quiet buildup of strain, and the potential for a magnitude 7.5 earthquake, the Tintina fault isn’t even listed on Canada’s official seismic hazard map. That means no warnings, no color-coded danger zones, and nobody designs buildings for it. The fault just didn’t show any signs of being active recently, and this part of Canada is really big, quiet, and doesn’t have a lot of monitoring.
That changed when researchers brought high-tech gear and uncovered subtle but clear land shifts near Dawson City. They look like scars on the landscape and point to past earthquakes, including one that pushed the land nearly 3,000 feet over millions of years. Newer glacial features showed no signs of disruption, which means the last major quake probably happened right before the end of the last ice age. In geologic terms, that’s pretty recent. When scientists lined up those land shifts with the ages of glaciers, the picture was clear: the Tintina fault isn’t retired. It’s just been on a really long coffee break, and now it’s itching to clock back in.
Researchers want it officially on Canada’s seismic hazard map. They’re scanning forests and rivers for faint scars that past earthquakes tried to hide, digging trenches like archaeologists, and using satellites to track if one side of a valley is slowly creeping ahead of the other. The goal is to find out how often this fault snapped in the past, how much stress it’s still holding on to today, and whether it’s going to go off quietly or all at once.
Scientists can model possibilities, but no one has a countdown clock for the next rupture. The smartest mindset isn’t prediction, it’s preparation. You brace for the plausible, not the precise, because the Earth’s schedule doesn’t come with reminders. The Earth’s crust is always fidgeting—it’s just that our maps are a little behind on the gossip. A fault everyone thought was harmless might actually be sitting on a magnitude 7.5 secret. This isn’t a cue to panic; it’s a cue to get smart with better data, sturdier buildings, and a few just-in-case habits.
In 2018, the most powerful underwater earthquake occurred between East Africa and Madagascar. There was a deep rift between the Earth’s crust and the mantle. Hundreds of thousands of tons of magma came out on the surface of the ocean floor. After that, a huge underwater volcano with a height of 2,700 feet was formed near the coast of Madagascar—almost twice the height of the Empire State Building, all hidden under the water.
French scientists studied this place since it had regular seismic activity. When the geologists went on an expedition to the coast of Madagascar, they discovered this giant underwater rock which was not there until recently. With the help of geological equipment, they discovered the earthquake happened deeper than usual below the Earth’s crust. Geologists created a special observatory to monitor the situation at this site in real time. Between February and May 2019, they recorded about 17,000 seismic activities below the ocean floor. Scientists had never recorded such deep earthquakes. This suggests that there are reservoirs and drainage systems inside our planet through which magma flows, like the veins and vessels of a living organism. The volume of lava the volcano spews can be compared with volcanic eruptions in the hottest spots of Earth.
Inside our planet, there are incandescent liquid metals and molten rocks containing almost all the chemical elements from the periodic table. This hot substance is called magma, which constantly flows in the planet’s bowels. Magma is lighter than the surrounding Earth’s crust, so it always tries to break out upwards. Fortunately, the surface of our planet is strong enough and doesn’t allow magma to splash out. But sometimes it happens because the Earth’s crust consists of many solid parts, tectonic plates, that constantly move and collide. When one puzzle gets unhooked from another, magma immediately spills out of the resulting gap. These places of faults with flowing magma are what we call volcanoes.
When such a volcano erupts, a splash of magma shakes the ocean floor. Lava and ash erupt from the inside of our planet, causing a release of destructive energy of incredible power. But thanks to the water, such a catastrophe can go unnoticed—more than 70% of the seismic activity associated with volcanoes occurs underwater. Inside the water, there’s total mess: lava heats the water and destroys the seabed. The ocean in this area boils and large air bubbles rise up. But the enormous pressure of hundreds of millions of gallons of water suppresses the volcano’s destructive power.
Sometimes the eruption gets to the surface. Such a case occurred in 2012 when vast pieces of pumice the size of a van began to float up in the southeastern Pacific Ocean. There were hundreds, even thousands of them, scattered over an area twice as large as New Zealand. Scientists used deep sea sonar apparatus on remote control to determine the full scale of the disaster. They studied the seabed and found 14 craters that released lava. More than a third of the erupted volcanic material surfaced and scattered throughout the ocean; the rest was scattered along the bottom, destroying all marine life in the area.
However, after eruptions, life is reborn like a phoenix from the ashes. Volcanic ash, lava, and soil around the volcano contain many useful elements and minerals that nourish the soil and promote the development of microorganisms. That’s why there’s so much vegetation around volcanoes. And underwater volcanoes can eventually form natural islands—a long process resulting from a large piece of land coming out of the water. Layer by layer over millions of years, the volcano grows until the level of volcanic rock reaches the surface in the form of a huge island. After many more years, the volcano may go out, and then life appears on the formed island. These volcanic islands have unique ecosystems because they develop separately from all continents.
There are hundreds of islands around the world that have appeared because of underwater volcano eruptions, from Hawaii to Indonesia to Iceland. Many are inhabited by people who build villages and small towns there. The ground on such islands is fertile, and the water is filled with fish. One of the most famous eruptions occurred on the island of Ōshima, south of Tokyo, where people built a beautiful city right in the crater of an active volcano. In May 1785, the eruption began. Thousands of birds rose and flew away from the island, then the ground began to shake. Thick smoke escaped from the top of the green volcano, and the mountain threw dirt, large rocks, and red-hot pieces of magma into the sky. The disaster lasted several weeks. People managed to evacuate, then there was a long recovery. Almost 250 years have passed since that moment, and during this time the volcano has never woken up. Despite the risk of a new eruption, people continue to live there since this place resembles paradise. Meteorological and seismological services constantly monitor the volcano’s activity.
Another discovery is centered around the Canadian Shield, a gigantic geological formation that stretches across much of Canada. Some of these rocks are nearly 2.5 billion years old, formed long before dinosaurs or complex life existed. For decades, scientists mainly studied these rocks for valuable minerals like gold, copper, nickel, and cobalt. But recently, researchers studying underground rock systems near Timmins, Ontario, noticed something unusual: hydrogen gas was constantly escaping from deep holes drilled into the rock.
At first, that may not sound very exciting. Hydrogen is already used around the world in industries like fertilizer production, steel manufacturing, and chemical plants. But there’s one huge problem: most hydrogen today is not clean. It’s usually made by burning dirty fuels that fill the air with pollution, mostly from natural gas and other fossil fuels through industrial processes that release huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Even green hydrogen, made from renewable electricity like solar or wind power, still costs a lot of money and requires massive amounts of energy to produce.
What scientists may have found in Canada is completely different. Naturally occurring hydrogen, also called white hydrogen, appears to be produced naturally beneath Earth’s surface through chemical reactions involving underground water and iron-rich rocks. In very simple terms, the Earth itself may be slowly creating fuel underground all on its own. Researchers from the University of Toronto and the University of Ottawa spent years measuring gases inside underground mine holes. What they found surprised even experienced scientists. The hydrogen was not showing up in random little bursts—it kept flowing continuously. Some holes released hydrogen year after year without stopping. Scientists estimated that thousands of these underground holes together could potentially create enough energy every year to power hundreds of homes from just one area. And researchers believe this may only be a tiny piece of what exists beneath the Canadian Shield.
For many years, scientists believed natural hydrogen deposits were probably too small or too rare to matter. Hydrogen molecules are incredibly tiny and difficult to trap underground. But discoveries around the world are beginning to challenge that idea. In Mali, naturally occurring hydrogen has already been used to generate electricity locally. Similar signs have been found in parts of Europe, Africa, Australia, and the United States. Now Canada may have joined that list in a very major way. The Canadian Shield contains huge amounts of ancient iron-rich rock, exactly the kind of environment scientists believe can naturally generate hydrogen underground. When water touches certain minerals deep below the Earth’s surface, chemical reactions can produce hydrogen gas as a byproduct. Over unbelievably long periods of time, this process may continue almost like a giant slow-moving natural factory buried beneath the crust.
If that turns out to be true, the economic impact could be historic. Countries with large energy reserves often gain huge political and economic influence. Unlike coal, oil, or natural gas, hydrogen mainly releases water vapor when used as fuel instead of carbon dioxide. In theory, it could power huge parts of the global economy while producing far less pollution. And if hydrogen can be pulled directly from underground natural reservoirs, it could avoid many of the expensive industrial steps currently needed to manufacture hydrogen artificially.
Canada may already have many of the tools needed to become a hydrogen superpower. The country has enormous land area, advanced mining infrastructure, stable political systems, huge freshwater resources, and decades of experience extracting natural resources from underground. Many of the same regions rich in minerals may also contain hydrogen-producing geology. Some remote northern communities that currently depend on expensive imported fuel could someday use nearby underground hydrogen systems for cleaner local energy.
Despite all the excitement, there are still many unanswered questions. Scientists still do not know how large these underground hydrogen systems truly are, or how easy or difficult it will be to extract the gas at large commercial scale. Hydrogen is difficult to handle—its molecules are extremely tiny, meaning the gas can leak very easily. It’s also highly flammable, meaning it must be stored and transported very carefully. Some researchers warned that the hype around white hydrogen may currently be moving faster than the actual science.
The most important discovery may simply be the proof that natural hydrogen can exist underground, continuously flow, and survive inside ancient geological systems for extremely long periods of time. That changes the conversation completely. For decades, natural hydrogen was mostly seen as a scientific curiosity. Now it’s becoming a serious exploration target. Companies are beginning to search for hydrogen-rich geology the same way oil companies once searched for giant petroleum fields. If future drilling confirms larger underground reservoirs, the race for white hydrogen could accelerate very quickly. Beneath Canada’s ancient rocks, hidden under landscapes formed billions of years ago, the Earth may have been quietly preparing this resource the entire time.
