A seafront hotel gets balconies wiped out as high as the third floor as 40' waves smash the northern part of the island. 

https://youtu.be/8gxg1dqVYaI

Amazing that is - seen that. Must have been a really bad one for Tenerife.

I saw this yesterday! Impressive!

Strange as the SLP charts don't show anything too troublesome?

The storm responsible for the heavy swells was over the NW Atlantic east of Newfoundland on 15th and 16th. The swell front travelled southeast across the Atlantic and affected the Canaries late 17th and on 18th.

Swell period chart

This image shows the swell period at 0000 GMT today from the NCEP NWW3 wave model. Amazingly the swell from that storm has now crossed the Equator and is heading down into the South Atlantic.

Swell animation

This animation shows the wave period every 3 hours from the same model. You can see the long period swells heading further down into the South Atlantic before being swamped by swells moving northeast from the Southern Ocean.

Beats me why anyone would holiday in the north of Tenerife at this time of year. It is much nicer than the south but the weather is the pits.

I have never been to Mesa del Mar but was in Puerto de la Cruz a month ago and the weather was horrid, albeit nothing like they are getting at the moment. Grey overcast skies and rain. Exactly the same when I was there in November 2014. There is a building in the main square which has a massive sun painted on it and that is the only sun you ever see there. Of course both times I was actually staying in the south and went up for a day trip only.

The satellite and radar for the Canaries are low resolution, and therefore next to useless, so there is often no indication of how bad the weather is in the northern part compared to further south.