Surfing Standing Waves at the Waimea River

Standing waves are a cool phenomenon. Growing up I got to play in some while whitewater rafting and then I encountered artificial, man-made waves that were designed to let surfers stay in practice away from the beach (see very bottom video). I thought that they looked like pretty cool toys, but failed to come close to simulating the complete surfing experience (disclaimer: I am a horrible surfer).

Today I came across a semi-natural standing wave that looks a lot cooler than anything man-made. The wave is created by diverting water from the Waimea River, which runs from the Alaka’i Swamp in Hawaii (the largest high-elevation swamp in the world) to the Pacific. Local surfers dig a channel from the river across the beach. At fist this man-made channel carries no more than a small stream, but as sand is carried away by the water it becomes a raging torrent that produces a magnificent set of standing waves.

Check out these videos of the standing waves, they are well worth the watch:



And the aforementioned artificial standing wave setup:

