Here's the National Weather Service account at Facebook:

"On July 3, 1992, a 27-mile-long wave rolled onto the Volusia County beach at around 2300 EST. The wave's extent was from Ormond Beach on the north to New Smyrna Beach on the south. The crest was 18 feet high and centered at Daytona Beach. Sailboats crashed ashore onto cars and many people suffered cuts and bruises from glass and debris. Two people required hospitalization and 200 vehicles were damaged. In all, 75 injuries were reported. The cause of the wave is believed to be a squall line's near-surface winds, which continuously pushed water in the ocean towards the coastline, eventually creating a large wave."

That was an unexpected rogering... 

yes, the sea was angry, & No, no one wants to talk about the space ship that crashed offshore that night..

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Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean

Yeah, that squall line theory doesn't quite gel. 

Technical article (at JSTOR):

Large Wave at Daytona Beach, Florida, Explained as a Squall-line Surge

Asbury H. Sallenger Jr., Jeffrey H. List, Guy Gelfenbaum, Richard P. Stumpf and Mark Hansen Journal of Coastal Research
Vol. 11, No. 4 (Autumn, 1995), pp. 1383-1388

On a clear calm evening during July 1992, an anomalously large wave, reportedly 6 m high, struck the Daytona Beach, Florida area. We hypothesize that a squall line and associated pressure jump, traveling at the speed of a free gravity wave, coupled resonantly with the sea surface forming the large wave or "squall-line surge." The wave was forced along the length of the squall line, with the greatest amplitude occurring at the water depth satisfying the resonant condition. Radar observations showed a strong squall line moving at a steady speed for several hundred kilometers parallel, to the coast from Georgia towards central Florida. The squall line dissipated 10 km north of Daytona Beach; any forced wave would then propagate freely and refract. Wave refraction analyses predict a longshore distribution of wave heights consistent with field measurements of maximum wave runup. 

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Another paper from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society is available, complete text, online.  Eleven pages with lots of maps, graphs, equations.

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Quote from the Orlando Sentinel story:

''I'm a surfer, and I've never seen anything like that,'' said Roy Bennett, 18, who fled with his wife, Maria. ''It had a good 12-foot face.''

The couple was walking below the pier when Bennett saw the wave and told Maria to run. Silently, the wave broke behind them.

''You could hear metal crashing all around,'' he said. ''It picked trucks up and threw them.''

 

And for the next week afterward the water along the coast consisted of decomposing life forms of who knows what origin.  It was like a soup of guts.  I surfed in the aftermath and lived to tell.. Bob knows.

it was definitly weird scenes in DB. I dont buy the squall line story, either. Floridas history is too bizarre for that simple idea...I didnt see any saucers the nite before, but that doesn't mean they weren't there. If not an ET crash then - underwater landslide ? ? maybe?

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Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean

2300? Someone saw a wave face just before midnight? Was there a full moon or something?

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Brother, when you get a minute, could I get a list of the words that trigger these fits?


Hey. Where are we going? (And what are we doing in a hand-basket?)

30 more years till the 50 year storm.

Who's gonna be waiting?





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Puerto Rico 11 - 24 - 2013

I was in Costa Rica on that date (July 3, 1992) and I remember hearing stories about it at the time. Interesting factoid!

i remember it was moon lit but not sure about full !! i remember all the cars and trucks that were trashed!!

So where did the wave actually break?  Did it break like 2 miles off shore and then the whitewater trashed everything?

Did anyone get barreled? Where's keanu reeves when you need him...

 

are there seismograph charts from that night?

It could have been falling space debri or whatever. There's a lot of junk in orbit. Underwater landslide seems probable too. The squall line theory does not. 

The theory, if correct, would indicate that that wave would be rare, since the squall line would have to be traveling at the unforced wave speed.
The only problem with this is that surface wave speed, period and size are coupled...

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Learn something.  Anything.  Please.

Believe or not I was staying with my family in a condo near Ponce Inlet when this happened. We woke up the next morning and didn't even know it happened. The water washed over the first set of dunes and almost washed over the 2nd set and made it to the porch area of this place. I was only 9 so my memory is a bit fuzzy but I remember being at the beach in the water the next day being a lil scared that another one would come. Rumor was back then it was 3 waves with the 3rd being the largest around 18feet high.. This could have been wayyy worse if this hit during daylight hours. Many people would have been injured and killed.. I still don't buy the squall line theory a small under water earthquake would make more sense but im no scientist.. Can't believe that was 20 years ago. Im getting old.. haha

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life is short, play hard,surf hard and be happy with being able to do the things you enjoy most...

Bob3000 may be right, linked from http://www.science-frontiers.com/sf084/sf084g12.htm

The Florida Rogue Wave

Very little has appeared in the scien-tific literature about the huge wave that crashed ashore at Daytona Beach, Florida, on July 3, 1992. Apparently, the scientific community is happy with the landslide explanation, but there may have been a different sort of disturbance.

First, the basic data:

"A wall of water as much as 18 feet high rose out of a calm sea and crashed ashore, smashing hundreds of vehicles parked on the beach and causing 75 minor injuries, officials and witnesses said.
"An undersea landslide apparently caused the 27-mile-long rogue wave late Friday night, a federal seismologist said yesterday."

The seismologist cited, F. Baldwin from the U.S. Geological Survey, estimated that the wave was 18 feet high and 250 feet wide.

(Anonymous; "Rogue Wave Smashes into Beach," Hawaii Tribune-Herald, July 5, 1992. Cr. H. DeKalb.)

Rumors of a falling object. The landslide theory sounds good, but there have been rumors that another phenomenon was involved. B. Stein, of Orlando, has reported the testimony of a boater, who was far offshore at the time:

"...the boater came forward with the information that, shortly before the time of the wave, he was in his boat about eight miles offshore. He watched as a distant object approached across the sky toward the ocean at a high rate of speed, and crossed the bow of his boat at an angle with a "whoosh" (his word). Shortly after, a giant swell made his 41-foot sailboat handle like a large surfboard. Various news sources state that the meteorite, as it is now being called, was anywhere from a meter to 10 feet across. The boater who wished to remain anonymous, gave the professors enough information so that they are hoping that the Navy will retrieve the object, which is presumed to be lying in about 70 feet of water off the Daytona Beach coastline, with plenty of coordinates for locating it."
(Stein, Becky; "Daytona Beach MiniTidal wave," Louisiana Mounds Society Newsletter, no. 52, p. 2, October 1, 1992.

Comment. With all the military and space-vehicle tracking equipment in the area, someone must know more about this event.

may be?

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Water dissolving...and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean

I was in Antarctica at the time and read about this in surf magazines my wife was sending me.  It had to have been a landslide or a falling object......the squall line theory makes no sense if one understand swel development, fetch, etc.  It would not have made 1 swell.  Resonance or not, one swell wouldn't result from the squall line theory....and resonating with a relatively flat sea further discredits the theory.  Wasn't it shortly there after that the Halloween swell occured?  I had to read about that from Antarctica as well.

I don't know if some of the Cape guys can elaborate, but when I was out @ the Cape I seem to remember seeing a sea floor satellite map of the Atlantic showing all of the detectable debri down there.

Edited: 07/07/2012 at 03:19 PM by Northjetty101