700 years of data, over a billion waves, 1 OMG.

To be honest, I don’t know if Laird Hamilton actually surfs big waves any more but he sure used to. King Poseidon taming the wild seas with quadriceps the size of watermelons, abs like a washboard, a jaw made from an old timey lantern. Who could ever forget his OMG Teahupo’o wave?

OMG.

Now, that I think about it, I only really remember him surfing big waves during his strapped years. Jaws etc. Though was that him or Derick Dorner or that other guy?

Well, back to the issue at hand, big waves and how to find them. In years past, hunting beasts required much knowledge of weather data and swell blah blah plus a premium subscription to forecasting site Surfline. Overnight, all that has vanished.

For scientists at the University of Copenhagen and University of Victoria have plugged 700 years worth of data about “freakishly large” rogue waves into the artificial intelligence machine and can know predict when, and where, they’re going to strike.

“Basically, it is just very bad luck when one of these giant waves hits. They are caused by a combination of many factors that, until now, have not been combined into a single risk estimate. In the study, we mapped the causal variables that create rogue waves and used artificial intelligence to gather them in a model which can calculate the probability of rogue wave formation,” scientist Dion Häfner told phys.org.

“Bad luck,” of course in the eye of the beholder. Shipping companies losing containers on the burly ocean etc.

Good luck if you are Laird Hamilton

“Our analysis demonstrates that abnormal waves occur all the time. In fact, we registered 100,000 waves in our dataset that can be defined as rogue waves. This is equivalent to around one monster wave occurring every day at any random location in the ocean. However, they aren’t all monster waves of extreme size,” explained other scientist Johannes Gemmrich.

One monster wave every day? This all really forces the question: what has Surfline been doing all this time?

Like, these Danish bros have plugged in over 1 billion waves to their algorithm and, as far as I can tell, make no money from premium subscribers.

WTF?

Let’s now turn our attention to Sam George discussing OMG.

The once lightly-esteemed boogie board now king of all craft?

Heroes are made, they say, not born but the adage is under scrutiny, today, as new evidence suggests six preteens and preteen-adjacents just foiled a mass drowning in Australia. Max Laird, Braith Davidson, George Griffin, Harrison Smee, Alex Norris, and Zach Marsden were getting their boogie on at Kiama Beach, a beautiful cove south of Sydney, when they heard screaming.

“My first thought was this can’t be happening,” 12-year-old George Griffin told ABC News. “It was 20 minutes after the lifeguards had packed up and we were just boogie boarding, so all six of us went over.”

They realized that two teenaged girls plus a mother and her three children and become caught in a vicious rip current that was pulling them out to sea.

Without thought for personal safety, the gang jumped into action, kicking out to the distressed. “I got to an 8, 9-year-old kid called Matt, and by the time I got to him he was completely under water, just his hand above the surface of the water, so I was pretty worried,” George continued. “It was shocking, but we just had to do what we could.”

The boys had actually been taking lifesaving classes at the local club and quickly reverted to training, saving all souls, boogie-ing them to the warm safety of land.

And if this isn’t yet another example of how the once lightly esteemed boogie has quietly become a force. I was in a local pizza spot, the other day, and a boogie video was playing on the overhead televisions. Absolute mad men belly flopping into the angriest slab monsters I have ever seen.

Completely transfixing.

Enjoy some here.

I wonder if the moment the boogie began its rebirth was when Kenny Powers kicked into a Florida lineup on one and terrorized the local surfers?

Hmmmm.

Tragedy in paradise.

Tragic news from Hawaii, this evening, as it has been reported that Makani Alexander, son of famed North Shore enforcer and WolfPak founder Kala Alexander, has been shot dead. The 25-year-old was in Waialua, near Haleiwa, late Sunday night when the shooting occurred.

Hawaii’s Daily News has shared that, “CPR was attempted on the 25-year-old victim in an attempt to revive him, but sadly, this attempt was unsuccessful. The sad announcement that the young man had passed away from his wounds was made this morning at 12:35 a.m.” though other information is scant.

An earlier version of the story used reporting that declared a shooter was at large. New information is that the tragedy was a result of an accident.

Messages from shocked and heartbroken friends are beginning to pepper social media.

Kala Alexander was a North Shore fixture throughout the 2000s as part of the Kauai crew including three-time World Champion Andy Irons. His name whispered in hushed tones by the visiting hordes hoping for a taste of glory. The New York Times profiled Kala and friends in 2009, writing, “They are known as the Wolfpak or simply “the boys.” They use fear and their fists to command respect in the surf along the North Shore of Oahu, a seven-mile stretch of some of the world’s most renowned waves. At the celebrated Banzai Pipeline, they determine which waves go to whom, and punish those who breach their code of respect for local residents and the waves.”

And, specifically about Kala:

The most notorious member is the group’s enforcer, Kala Alexander, a professional surfer with muscular tattooed arms and “Wolfpak” inked across his knuckles. In 2007, Alexander starred in “The 808,” a reality television series about the Wolfpak and the North Shore, and appeared in the films “Blue Crush” and “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.”

More, certainly, as the story develops.