A lone buoy caught the Pacific’s most extreme rogue wave ever recorded
A 58-foot wave off British Columbia was not the tallest ever seen, but scientists say it was the most extreme rogue wave on record.
A wave rising 17.6 meters, or 58 feet, off the coast of British Columbia has been identified as the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded. What makes it remarkable is not just its height, but the fact it towered over the surrounding sea so dramatically that scientists say it was an event expected only about once every 1,300 years.
The wave was only spotted because a buoy happened to be there
The wave appeared in November 2020 near Ucluelet, off Vancouver Island, and lifted a solitary buoy high above the surrounding water. Researchers later confirmed that the reading captured an unusually severe rogue wave, one that might have passed unnoticed if that instrument had not been in exactly the right place.
A short clip below gives a summary of the discovery.
The buoy was part of a larger offshore network operated by MarineLabs, a research company that placed dozens of devices in the water to gather data on hazards in deep coastal areas. That one measurement ended up documenting a four story wall of water in the Pacific, and scientists say the event stands out as the most extreme rogue wave ever directly recorded in proportion to the sea around it.
MarineLabs chief executive Scott Beatty said the unpredictability of rogue waves and the force they carry can make them dangerous for marine operations and for the public. He also said the company’s data is helping researchers build a clearer picture of when, where and how these waves form, and what kind of risks they create.
Why this wave set a record even though taller rogue waves exist
The Ucluelet wave was not the tallest rogue wave ever measured. That distinction still belongs to a wave known as Draupner, which struck an oil drilling platform about 160 kilometers, or 100 miles, off the coast of Norway on New Year’s Day in 1995. That wave reached nearly 26 meters, or 85 feet, and helped turn what had long been treated as maritime folklore into a documented reality.
What sets the British Columbia event apart is its scale relative to the waves around it. Scientists classify a rogue wave as one that is more than twice the height of neighboring waves. The Draupner wave, for example, reached 25.6 meters while surrounding waves were about 12 meters high.
By comparison, the Ucluelet wave was nearly three times the size of nearby waves. Physicist Johannes Gemmrich of the University of Victoria said in 2022 that, proportionally, it was likely the most extreme rogue wave ever recorded. He added that only a small number of rogue waves in high sea states have been observed directly, and nothing of that magnitude had been seen.
The study examining the Ucluelet event was published in Scientific Reports. The finding matters because it shows that a wave does not need to be the tallest on record to be the most exceptional by the standard scientists use to identify rogue behavior.
What scientists are learning about where rogue waves strike and how dangerous they can be
Researchers are still working out exactly how rogue waves form. Some efforts focus on direct, real time measurements, while others use models to test how wind and ocean conditions can combine to create rare waves.
The stakes are high. Even when they happen far offshore, rogue waves can damage marine operations, wind farms and oil rigs. If they are large enough, they can also endanger people on the coast. The Ucluelet wave and the Draupner wave did not cause severe damage or loss of life, but other rogue waves have been linked to far worse outcomes. Some ships that disappeared in the 1970s are now thought to have been sunk by sudden waves of this kind.
There are also signs that current forecasting tools may still be missing part of the picture. In February 2026, a team led by researchers from the University of South Florida published an analysis in Ocean Science comparing years of buoy observations with the global wave models used to forecast ocean conditions. They found those models consistently underestimate how extreme waves can become, missing much of the rare upper end that buoys detect in the real world.
That analysis also suggested rogue waves are not simply random. They were found to peak in winter and to cluster most heavily off the US West Coast, with the North Atlantic close behind. That puts the Pacific Northwest, including the area where the Ucluelet wave was measured, in one of the highest risk regions identified in the study.
The researchers also pointed to a possible warning pattern in the data. In roughly three quarters of the rogue waves they looked at, a sharp drop in wave correlation was followed by a quick rebound just before the wave arrived. They hope that signal could eventually help build real time warning systems.
Other research suggests the long term challenge may grow. A 2020 study projected that wave heights in the North Pacific will rise with climate change, and experimental work published in 2024 indicated that these waves may be up to four times higher than previously thought possible. Beatty said capturing a once in a millennium wave so close to home shows how better coastal measurement could improve safety and decision making for marine operations and coastal communities.
