Waterspout

[Cheechako]

Here's a nasty one! Tampa Bay. (Amazing that there is no weather category on CF, so I put this under navigation)

[boatman61]

Hey..!! that quite beautiful.. thanks.

[Steadman Uhlich]

I wonder what the airspeed is in the "tube" of the spout?

Is it high? How high?

Is it lower than a typical lower level tornado on land?

What is the speed of the wind at the surface of the water when the spout goes over a point?

I am posting these questions first, simply from curiosity and to stimulate some thinking among readers.

To find an answer I used google and found:

Here is a link to a Wikipedia article that has some interesting facts and subtopics concerning Waterspouts:

NOTE! The following excerpt is focused on "Non Tornadic" waterspouts. There is another section on the stronger "Tornadic" waterspouts (that are more dangerous).

Here is an excerpt:
"Waterspouts that are not associated with a rotating updraft of a supercell thunderstorm are known as "non-tornadic" or "fair-weather waterspouts", and are by far the most common type. Fair-weather waterspouts occur in coastal waters and are associated with dark, flat-bottomed, developing convective cumulus towers. Waterspouts of this type rapidly develop and dissipate, having life cycles shorter than 20 minutes.[9] They usually rate no higher than EF0 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, generally exhibiting winds of less than 30 m/s (67 mph).[10]

They are most frequently seen in tropical and sub-tropical climates, with upwards of 400 per year observed in the Florida Keys.[11] They typically move slowly, if at all, since the cloud to which they are attached is horizontally static, being formed by vertical convective action instead of the subduction/adduction interaction between colliding fronts.[11][12] Fair-weather waterspouts are very similar in both appearance and mechanics to landspouts, and largely behave as such if they move ashore.[11]"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterspout

[meatservo]

Fast enough to mess up a good day on the water...

One of the problems with thunderstorms is microbursts, if it can bring down an L-1011, it can mess up a boat...


meatservo

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Hey..!! that quite beautiful.. thanks.

Quite beautiful.

I wonder if I would think so if that was at sea a d I was where the palm tree is?

😅

[HopCar]

That really is a very striking photo.
I once saw three water spouts in a line moving south to north in Biscayne bay. They didn't look quite as threatening as Cheechako's one.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Quite beautiful.

I wonder if I would think so if that was at sea a d I was where the palm tree is?

😅

That's when you drop all sail, start the engine and run N as fast as possible..

[roverhi]

We get occasional water spouts that come ashore. One took off our roof so they have a bit of wind velocity. It picked up a small camper that the owner's son lived in and lifted it more than 50' over a some trees and before dropping it. Fortunately the boy had gotten drunk at a party and didn't come home that evening. Had to move from tornado prone midwest to get hit by one.

[sirfer]

So....if you had to outrun a waterspout, which would be better.....cat or mono[emoji41]

[DotDun]

Originally Posted by sirfer

So....if you had to outrun a waterspout, which would be better.....cat or mono[emoji41]

Rocna

[Suijin]

Over the Adriatic sea. And which way to go is easy in this case. Left or right...

[HopCar]

This one came ashore in Ft. Lauderdale a couple of years ago. It lifted a bounce house quite high. Luckily the kids in it fell out before it got very high.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d9Z_MF6JQsg

[boatpoker]

Wikipedia seems to suggest that these are restricted to warm climates (Tampa, the Keys) but I have seen dozens of them in the cold waters of Lake Huron like this one on

Youtube

.

[SecondBase]

Originally Posted by DotDun

Rocna

Dot you beat me to it. Now is that a tandem Rocna rig?[emoji41]

Seriously they are hypnotic at sea. Steer away. Not sure how far north they spawn but I saw two off Hilton Head.

[SailFastTri]

Wickipedia is a fake encyclopedia. It's curated and vetted by peers and amateurs, and people who might have ulterior motives, and that can get very political and opinionated on many topics.