In this work we prove that the shallow water flow, subject to strong wind forcing and linearized around an adequate stationary profile, develops for large times closed trajectories due to the propagation of Rossby waves, while Poincaré waves are shown to disperse. The closed trajectories actually could account for the presence of persistent eddies in the ocean. The methods used in this paper involve semi-classical analysis and dynamical systems for the study of Rossby waves, while some refined spectral analysis is required for the study of Poincaré waves, due to the large time scale involved which is of diffractive type.