Roger Long wrote:
I've been kind of interested in some of the posts about Lake Erie conditions
to see references to 12 foot waves. I know the waves are shorter and steeper
there due to the lighter water and shallow depths. Twelve footers would
considered pretty big however, even on the ocean.

I've been pretty involved in past years with marine safety and accident
investigation projects and this gave me a chance to look into wave height
reports. There is a pretty consistent tendency for even experienced seaman
to over estimate wave heights by about 100 percent.

Years ago, when I used to fly tests for the US Navy, part of the test
report was the sea state. Even though it's not the same as wave height,
sea state is closely related to wave height, wind speed, etc. It's more
a "roughness" measure and is determined from the air by the density of
whitecaps and goes from 0 to 9, but we usually wouldn't conduct tests in
anything higher than 5. It was usually a coordinated test, me in the
air and some surface and/or subsurface assets. The number I came up
with from 200 to 1000 feet up was almost invariably at least one lower
than what the boat came up with bobbing on the surface.

Steve