Freak Waves Swamp Maine's Boothbay Harbor, Baffling Experts

Nov. 4 (Bloomberg) -- A series of freak waves that crashed into Boothbay Harbor, Maine, caused $10,000 to $20,000 in damage and left experts and residents puzzling over what caused it.

The first of the waves last week pushed a 4-foot to 12-foot (1.2-meter to 3.6-meter) wall of water into the harbor, said Dave Benner, Boothbay Harbor Emergency Management Agency director, citing witnesses.

``We really don't know what happened; it was definitely weird and nothing normal,'' Benner said by telephone from the town about 126 miles (203 kilometers) northeast of Boston. ``I have never seen anything like it.''

Such waves can be caused by squalls or seismic activity, such as a landslide under the ocean or a small earthquake, said Jeff List, an oceanographer with the U.S. Geological Survey in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The exact cause of the Maine event is under investigation.

``There was no earthquake at the time, so it was no earthquake-generated tsunami,'' said Paul Whitmore, director of the National Weather Service's West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center in Palmer, Alaska.

Whitmore said he couldn't discount an undersea landslide. It would be almost impossible to determine if that was the cause without knowing where the waves originated, he said.

Monitoring stations in the Atlantic south of Boothbay Harbor showed evidence of the waves passing by, he said.

`Pulses' Hit Coast

At least three ``pulses'' of waves came into the harbor at low tide last week, twisting inch-thick steel pins, spinning boats and smashing ramps, Benner said. Waves also hit neighboring Bristol and a 10-20 mile stretch of the southern Maine coast.

List said freak waves caused by squalls have been reported in the past, including one in Chicago on Lake Michigan that killed seven in 1954, and on Daytona Beach, Florida, in 1992 that injured about 75.

Conditions have to be perfect for a squall-line surge to occur, List said. When they are right, the storm will push an intense wave through the ocean or a lake.

Most of the waves hit a small area, said List, who investigated the event in Daytona.

``Once in a very long time these things seem to get generated,'' List said.

Benner said the sun was out and there was only a light breeze when the wave came into the harbor in Maine.

List said that's not unusual for waves caused by weather systems. Once the wave gets started it can outlast the squall that started it, he said. [link to www.bloomberg.com]