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. 

that ended up happeing 5 months after the above post

Good one Bob3000

This is officially a great thread....

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"One of the reasons why propaganda tries to get you to hate government is because it's the one existing institution in which people can participate to some extent and constrain tyrannical unaccountable power." Noam Chomsky.

 

Bodhi will be there...

 

I'll be waiting on my set!   (probably the dumbest surf come back in the history of surf movies...  he should have paddled to New Zealand 

Was it really 20 years ago?

Hard to believe.

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Wooden Boards for Iron Men

I was passed out in a VW camper van at Sebastian Inlet after surfing dribble and then fishing through a case of Busch.

did you catch anything, besides a buzz?

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

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

alright. I've been holding back. I can now confirm what caused it. Its so obvious, y'all will kick yourselves. ...here's a hint: it wasnt an underwater landslide, or a squall line, and probably NOT an alien space ship crash...

You may want to sit down for this...

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

Dude it was that nuke they lost off of Savannah.  Thats why all the rotten guts washed up.  It was like a deep sea holocaust.

SR - you are on the right track... I've gone into Beanrat meditation over this - and IT DAWNED ON ON ME - here's what REALLY happened...Nuclear subs where being tested out of Jacksonville and caused more than one marine incident in that time period. They realized the consequences of their wakes after the fact and moved them further from the coastline. The actual speed a sub can go underwater is supposedly classified but is said to be over 85mph! If it can go 85 underwater, on top it can probably go faster. Ask any mariner with time at sea and they will tell you a sub makes a big and deep wake that travels looooooong distances without dissipating. I have seen it with a sub at a normal cruise speed of maybe 20 knots and could not even imagine how big a wake it would put out at 50+. From my experience there is no doubt that this kind of wave could easily be created by a nuclear sub (OR TWO - possibly racing) and probably was. As for the governments explanation they do not want the liability. Also the one guy says three waves and that would help back up the wake theory. This sounds like a sub going 100+ MPH then submerging to me! Sure it was far away and looked closer than it was being so big and fast. "...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, ....) and now you know th REST of the story! It was nuclear sub races.- B3K

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

^Post of the year.

...which also explains the squall line theory, which has a classical "cover up" style ring to it. That's the very type of story they would come up with to cover up something linked to nuclear sub testing. That was quite the "aha" moment Bob. 

Maybe Godzilla belched or something.  LOL

Seriously though. I did a paper on this in college.  It was the squall line moving at the perfect speed over a constant depth of water over a long distance.  There's a formula but basically it just says the squall line and the wave were in resonance which help build the wave bigger and bigger over time/distance.

THey have happened on the great lakes, and in Canada more often.

Here's an article about it from Canada

If I remember right from my research, A more popular one bounced off one side of lake michigan and hit the otherside destroying a pier and killing some people on it.

I looked up all the past articles on it but can't find them now.

I forget the actual name, gravity wave I think, or barotropic rossby wave or something like that.

The findings of the Daytona wave were published in the AMS Journal a few years later.  The American Meteorological Society (which I'm part of) is NOT a government agency.  It's a bunch of scientists, college students and professors.  They would be the last people to come up with a government cover up. But it's always fun to come up with crazy ideas.

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WPTV NewsChannel5/Fox 29
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Palm Beach County, Florida

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I was looking @ your link for the data explaining how a fast moving squall line causes 3 waves, such as were observed in Daytona.

I may be missing something here, but the squall line theory seems addressed to the cause of a single wave with atmospheric pressure as the causality, not multiple waves...