Dramatic Video Shows Extreme Waves Crashing Into Marshall Islands

Rogue waves crash into a U.S. Army
base in the Marshall Islands. 
Miraculously, nobody was
seriously injured or killed. 

Dramatic video making the rounds shows immense rogue waves crashing into a U.S. military base in the Marshall Islands.  

Judging from the news video that you can find at the bottom of this post, I'm grateful and pleasantly surprised that nobody was killed. 

In the video, you see two people standing outside the door of what looks like some sort of lounge or restaurant. The immense wave crashes in, and the people disappear and the door gets violently smashed in. 

It looks like it hits a woman in the head as she goes under water. The water rushes into the room. Then, just when you think everybody is starting to recover, an even larger wave crashes through the open doorway and the windows.   The power goes out.

Some minor injuries were reported, but unbelievably, nobody was seriously injured. Including the woman who was hit by the door and disappeared under the water in the video.  

The waves caused lots of damage at an important U.S. military base, though. According to ABC News:

"Flooding from the waves inundated one-third of the island of Roe-Namor, located in the Kwajalein Atoll in the northern Marshall Islands, according to the U.S. Army. The U.S. Army Garrison-Kwajalein Atoll base serves as a space and missile defense test range for the U.S. Department of Defense and contains some of the Army's most sophisticated tracking equipment."

ABC continues: 

"Ocean water had washed over the northwest side of the island. Standing water was found in several buildings on the base, such as the dining facility, the chapel and a theater, the Army said, citing an initial aerial damage assessment."

 There was no particular storm to set off the big waves, though Pacific Ocean storms this time of year can make surf higher than it is other times of the year.  Also, no earthquake that would have produced a tsunami.

Instead, wave energy combined to make even bigger blasts of water from the oceans.  

A photo taken at a U.S. Army base in the Marshall Islands
after massive rogue waves swept through. 

Says ABC News:

"Jon Sienkiewicz, chief of the ocean branch for the NOAA Ocean Prediction Center, said the extreme was was much larger than the average size of the waves hitting the island's shores.

'If there are multiple wave sets, then it's possible that the energy can just double in an area from two different set of waves,' Sienkiewicz told ABC News."

The waves probably would have caused havoc and damage on the Marshall Islands even if climate change wasn't a thing. But since sea levels are higher than they used to be, waves can really penetrate onto shore much better, causing even more damage than you'd otherwise get.

The Marshall Islands are in the remote western Pacific Ocean roughly half way between Hawaii and Australia.  

Here's the video from Good Morning America. Click here to watch the video, or if you see the image below, click on that.