  We discuss the effects of the directional spreading on the occurrence of
extreme wave events. We numerically integrate the envelope equation recently
proposed by Trulsen et al., Phys of Fluids 2000, as a weakly nonlinear model
for realistic oceanic gravity waves.Initial conditions for numerical
simulations are characterized by the spatial JONSWAP power spectrum for several
values of the significant wave height, steepness and directional spreading. We
show that by increasing the directionality of the initial spectrum the
appearance of extreme events is notably reduced.
