The sinking of the El Faro: predicting real world rogue waves during Hurricane Joaquin

TL;DR

This study combines high-resolution hurricane sea state simulations with probabilistic models to estimate rogue wave likelihood during Hurricane Joaquin, providing insights into the conditions leading to the sinking of the El Faro vessel.

Contribution

It introduces a novel probabilistic modeling approach to predict rogue wave occurrence during hurricanes using high-resolution sea state data.

Findings

Estimated rogue wave encounter probability for El Faro was about 1/400 over 10 minutes.

Largest simulated rogue wave had similar features to known historic rogue waves.

Rogue wave formation mechanisms involve constructive interference and nonlinear effects.

Abstract

We present a study on the prediction of rogue waves during the 1-hour sea state of Hurricane Joaquin when the Merchant Vessel El Faro sank east of the Bahamas on October 1, 2015. High-resolution hindcast of hurricane-generated sea states and wave simulations are combined with novel probabilistic models to quantify the likelihood of rogue wave conditions. The data suggests that the El Faro vessel was drifting at an average speed of approximately~$2.5$~m/s prior to its sinking. As a result, we estimated that the probability that El Faro encounters a rogue wave whose crest height exceeds 14 meters while drifting over a time interval of 10~(50) minutes is $\sim1/400$~$(1/130)$. The largest simulated rogue wave has similar generating mechanism and characteristics of the Andrea, Draupner and Killard rogue waves as the constructive interference of elementary waves enhanced by bound nonlinearities.