[Public-List] Dave's waves

[Hugh McCormack]

This is still intriguing.  I was thinking that, given the calm conditions, you may have experienced the wake from a large ship travelling at a good speed somewhere out in Lake Michigan.  With enough distance the wake might arrive long after the ship had passed.  However your waves came from the east which would tend to rule out that source.  Waves will refract around points of land and continue in a direction different from their original path.  In this case the waves would have to change direction by roughly 180 degrees which seems highly unlikely.  This event would have to have been initiated by a fair bit of energy to produce a 2 foot wave in otherwise calm waters.  This is particularly so given the distance that the waves travelled and also the implied length of the waves perpendicular to the direction of travel.

 

A quick check for seismic activity in the area does not seem to produce anything recent (see the following  http://www.iris.edu/seismon/ ) so a local trigger seems unlikely.

 

Cheers,

 

Hugh

 
> Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2009 10:26:24 -0400
> From: Dterrell at message.nmc.edu
> To: public-list at lists.alberg30.org
> Subject: Re: [Public-List] (no subject)
> 
> Thanks to all who responded
> 
> I sail in West Grand Traverse Bay in northwestern Michigan.Grand Traverse Bay is about 30 miles long and is divided into east and west bay by an 18 mile long peninsula. Both bays are fairly narrow. I think I was between a half mile and a mile from shore. Since the end of August the mid west has been the beneficary of a stable large high. That day there was hardly any wind. I have no reason to think the lake and the bay were having much different conditions. I could check the weather history and confirm that observation. These waves came from east to west. To the extent that there was any wave train that day, it would typically be from the northeast.
> 
> A soliton looks like looks like a good possibility. What I could see from the boat looked a lot like the soliton in the strait of Gibralter image. The one difference is that that the Gibralter soliton appeared to be curved while the wave pattern I saw was straighter. It held together going all the way across the bay. 
> 
> I am interested in any other approaches to understanding this event that may be out there.
> 
> David
> 
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Create a cool, new character for your Windows Live™ Messenger. 
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9656621
 1253486366.0