Sea can cause individual (unexpected) rogue waves much higher than normal. Most waves are less than high and it is not unusual for strong storms to double or triple that height; offshore construction such as wind farms and oil platforms use metocean statistics from measurements in computing the wave forces (due to for instance the hundred-year wave) they are designed against. Rogue waves, however, have been documented at heights above . The top of a wave is known as the crest, the lowest point between waves is the trough and the distance between the crests is the wavelength. The wave is
Wave vector in directions other than that of wave propagation. The condition for the wave vector to point in the same direction in which the wave propagates is that the wave has to be homogeneous, which isn't necessarily satisfied when the medium is lossy. In a homogeneous wave, the surfaces of constant phase are also surfaces of constant amplitude. In case of inhomogeneous waves, these two species of surfaces differ in orientation. Wave vector is always perpendicular to surfaces of constant phase. For example, when a wave travels through an anisotropic medium, such as light waves through an asymmetric crystal or sound