Shocking 101ft-high monster waves captured from space in NASA satellite images
NASA has published spectacular satellite photographs which gave a new insight into a record-breaking 101-foot-high giant sea wave claimed to be surfed by Portuguese teenager António Laureano at Praia do Norte in Nazaré, Portugal. The photos of the enormous wavers were captured by Landsat8's Operational Land Imager instrument in October 2020.
António Laureano, a 19-year-old Portuguese surfer, claims to have broken the current world record of 80 feet by riding a wave estimated to be 101.4 feet (30.9 meters). With the release of these remarkable satellite images that show the ferocity of the giant waves on that particular day, Nasa also published current images from the space orbit and compared the pictures with the typical winter morning.
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In April 2018, Rodrigo Koxa of Brazil set the official world record for surfing the largest wave ever, as he rode off the giant wave on Portugal's famous beach. But his accomplishment was overshadowed by tragedy when British surfer Andrew Cotton fractured his leg in a terrible crash called Wipeout of the Year.
However, in October 2020, António Laureano, a Portuguese teenager, surfed the mammoth wave that was believed to be over 101 feet high.
The remarkably mammoth and energetic wave produced in October 2020 is supposed to have been driven by the remains of Hurricane Epsilon, the fourth major hurricane of the tremendously active 2020 Atlantic hurricane season. But storms alone don't explain why the sea waves are regularly so large. Praia do Norte produces huge, heavy, and occasionally dangerous waves that are thought to be the world's largest, due to a deep canyon beneath the ocean's surface.
According to José da Silva, an oceanographer at the University of Porto, the white part parallel to the shore in the pictures, published by NASA is the foam produced by the huge waves. A green spiral is also spotted in the picture which extends up to 6.2 miles (10 km) from the seashore. Experts claim the green part was the result of seafloor sediments that have been re-suspended by the breaking of the mammoth waves.