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« Winter weather remembers summer's Arctic sea-ice | Main | How to Kill a Hurricane. With a Space-Based Death Ray! »

Largest Wave of the Year

by Larry O'Hanlon | April 20, 2009

Once upon a time I was a surfer. A very minor surfer. Minuscule, really. So I'm annually overwhelmed by the Billabong XXL surfing competition which allows surfers from anywhere on the planet to compete for a variety of awards -- so long as their accomplishments are properly visually recorded so they can be judged.

My favorite award of the bunch is for the biggest wave successfully ridden. These are giant waves that must be caught by a surfer being towed in by a buddy on a Jet Ski-type craft (because these large waves travel too fast for anyone to paddle up to speed). Anyway, below is a picture of this year's winner. It's always a mind-blowing shot.

For more about big wave surfing, as well as Earth's biggest waves in general, be sure to visit this week's Discovery Earth's special feature on Giant Waves.
- Larry O'Hanlon  BillabongXXL09BiggestWinnerBaker

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lucas chernoff

hi my name is lucas I was wondering if you died on that wave.

Posted by: lucas chernoff | November 12, 2009 at 05:07 PM

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Larry O'Hanlon
is Discovery Earth's producer. Before that he wrote 1,000-odd science stories for Discovery News. Larry started out as a geologist, spent a little time as a ranger in Death Valley, then moved into writing about Earth and environmental sciences for every sort of media outlet. He lives with his wife and kids in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Kieran Mulvaney
is the author of At the Ends of the Earth: A History of the Polar Regions and The Whaling Season: An Inside Account of the Struggle to Stop Commercial Whaling. He’s finishing a book on polar bears. He’s co-founder of the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society, a leader of Greenpeace expeditions to Antarctica and the Arctic.

John D. Cox
is the author of Climate Crash: Abrupt Climate Change & What It Means for Our Future; Storm Watchers: The Turbulent History of Weather Prediction from Franklin’s Kite to El Niño, and Weather For Dummies: A Reference For The Rest of Us. His journalism career includes the Sacramento Bee, Reuter Ltd., & UPI. He lives in northern California.

Michael Reilly
is a volcanologist and Earth science writer for Discovery News. In the past, Michael has worked for New Scientist, Wired, the Newark Star-Ledger, and Gawker Media's science fiction blog, io9. He lives alarmingly close to the San Andreas fault, along with 7 million other people in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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