Big-wave surfers need more than skill, strength and courage to succeed — the ferociousness of nature must also play its part.

And that's just what happened on October 29, 2020, when a teenage student may have surfed the biggest wave ever at Praia do Norte in Nazaré, Portugal. 

Wave height analysis can be tricky but 19-year-old Portuguese surfer António Laureano claims to have broken a world record by riding the estimated 101.4-foot (30.9-metre) wave, which if confirmed would surpass the current record of 80ft.

Now, NASA has released a fascinating satellite image that captures the intensity of the waves that day, along with a more recent picture from space to compare it to an average winter morning.

The images were taken by the Operational Land Imager on Landsat 8, the eighth in a series of Earth-monitoring spacecraft jointly managed by Nasa and the US Geological Survey.

It carries an optical imager to take pictures in visible and infrared light, as well as a thermal infrared sensor to measure the heat radiation coming up off our planet's surface. 

The 2020 image provides a visceral insight into the huge amount of energy associated with big-wave conditions, while a second image from February 5, 2022 shows the same area on a more typical day.  

The waters off Nazaré, Portugal have churned out some of the largest waves ever surfed, including the current world record by Rodrigo Koxa, who rode an 80-foot wave in 2017. 

In winter, the waves off North Beach (Praia do Norte) average about 50 feet (15 metres) high, while on an exceptional day surfers can catch a wave towering around 80 feet (24 metres).