Comment by rcthompson

Anyone familiar with standard wave mechanics will expect that crossing waves will pass right through each other. The part that confuses me is why the waves don't spread out laterally. For instance, take the waves in the article that went from the Indian ocean to the Mexican coast. Wouldn't they fan out across the entirety of the Pacific ocean after passing between Australia and Antarctica? Or maybe they do, but they're so big to begin with that even after they do so, they're still big enough to crash on the entire west coast of the Americas? Would the same storm have caused gigantic waves to crash on the much closer southern Australian shore?