Watch: Rogue Wave Floods Lifeguard Tower During Historic Hawaii Swell

Dashel Pierson
·2 min read
29

Hawaii was hit hard by a historically huge swell on Friday.

And particularly, as expected, the apex of the energy slammed the North Shore of Oahu. It was the Black Friday swell; closeouts sets washed through Waimea Bay; big-wave surfers went full survival mode and tempted fate at the notorious Outer Reefs of Oahu.

But, along with the surfing heroics, also came damage. Rocks, debris, and water flooded the Kamehameha Highway. And some of that chaos came during the night.

As Dave Wassel, big-wave surfer and North Shore lifeguard, documented, a rogue wave flooded one of the local lifeguard towers in the middle of the night.

Wassel captioned:

“Every swell has its own personality. Where last years Eddie swell had a longer interval, meaning it went deeper into the water column making waves barrel way offshore, todays episode is a closer interval, coinciding with a full moon high tide. The result, waves doubling up / riding up on each other. Definitely bigger than expected.”

And Surfline’s cameras captured that massive, unexpected size in the middle of the night at Waimea Bay; about the clip below, they noted:

“There were some strong signals the incoming NW swell now slamming the Hawaiian Islands was going to the bigger than the various models indicated. The storm looked great on satellite imagery and multiple satellite passes confirmed wind, seas and eventually swell were all larger than model guidance. Thus, we had high expectations for XL-XXL surf. But even our lofty expectations have been well exceeded by what is the easily the largest swell since last January's Eddie event (and today's swell is showing almost identical numbers on the Waimea buoy).”

Now, back to Wassel. Here’s his report from the rogue wave that flooded his lifeguard tower:

“A lot of people are going to try and compare this swell to the Eddie [Aikau Big Wave Invitational] last year [January of 2023] where Luke [Shepardson] won.

“The amount of inundation…of swell, of surf, of rocks and debris that’s still being cleared off the road now…I would say, I haven’t seen anything like this in 10 years. That peak of the swell last night with the high tide, it was so intense.

“Lemme show you something. I come into the tower, and I see the amount of sand and water that came up here last night at the peak of the swell. There’s water and sand up on our desk. That’s four feet to my waist. And we are 15 to 18 feet above sea level.

“Yeah, it’s safe to say it’s damn big. You know what they say, Eddie, he always comes at night.”

Winter has just barely begun. More to come.

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