A Ripple Effect

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A low-pressure system forms in the Pacific, 4,000 miles away from shore, its winds churning waters into chaotic ripples. This generates a powerful swell that unifies as it diametrically moves away from its source, focusing its energies for an epic journey ahead.

The swell’s frequencies organize and align naturally, its longer wavelengths powerfully rolling though the waters with a force that can only be matched by the Tide itself. The weaker wavelengths are overtaken, some of which simply dissipate into the deep. The swell’s arrival to the nearshore ramp of earth is heralded by an abrupt rising and falling of the water surface as the ocean’s veil is removed, unable to hide its energetic secrets any longer.

Marching forward to their destiny, the waves rise up and crest, while the offshore winds push their top layers in opposition, sending a pulse of diamonds into the sky that cascade down like a rainstorm in May.  Underneath, the invisible trough lashes kelp fields and churns its way through the seafloor sediments. Finally, the advance wave’s crest can no longer be held back, and it curves forward onto itself, eating it’s own energy as it barrels toward a final crescendo.

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