sailboats can injure and kill

[jackdale]

The school sailing vessel Concordia was sunk by a microburst.

Abandon Ship: The Sinking of the SV Concordia - Doc Zone | CBC-TV

[Mr B]

Originally Posted by minaret

All regional names for winds dictated by local effects. Derecho is an old word for a particular rare meteorological effect, the term is Spanish. A Tornado is a swirling wind, a Derecho is a straight line wind in Spanish. The formation of a Derecho, often more than 250 miles wide by definition, has much to do with downburst clusters. It can be a huge and catastrophic wind event, which would in some cases be quite difficult for a sailor to avoid due to the sheer size and speed of the weather formation. What would you do if you saw this coming at you?


Facts About Derechos - Very Damaging Windstorms

Just thought as long as we were scaring each other with tales of dangerous weather effects, I'd throw that in the mix. Look at the video of the Pakwash Derecho under photos and videos in the link I posted, the ground and air footage is absolutely terrifying...

That bottom left hand piccy is why I hid in Esmeralda cove where my boat got wrecked,
I was not going to sail for four or five hours thru it to get to Port Stephens, considering I had a dodgy steering as well,
Port Stephens got flattened by that storm,

[minaret]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Derechos are convective systems so thank God don't occur at sea. We get hurricanes instead

They don't FORM at sea. They can, however, move out to sea, just as a hurricane can move ashore. Examples-

June 2012 North American derecho - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


The damaging winds continued eastward across the Chesapeake Bay towards the Atlantic Ocean, losing little strength despite the cooler marine layer.[11] The derecho emerged into the Atlantic Ocean shortly before 2:00 a.m. EDT (0600 UTC) on June 30, while still producing winds as high as 81 mph (130 km/h) at the coast in Tuckerton, New Jersey and strong and damaging winds on the Delmarva Peninsula.[6] Numerous special marine warnings were issued for the coastal waters of affected states by the NWS as the derecho moved out to sea.[12] The storm dissipated around 4:00 a.m. over the Atlantic south of Long Island, New York


Dan and Jaye's cruising blog: Kumatage (reflections on the water): Derecho!


Violent storm that slammed South Jersey is known as derecho | NJ.com

[DeepFrz]

Just to clarify things here. Derechos are not microbursts.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by foolishsailor

Those all look to me like Super Cells which is a concetrated form of a line squall. Deadly, but basically the same phenomena on a larger scale.

They are known to also have serious microburst potential due to the drastic temperature differentiations amd can create winds that "fall" out of the sky vertically and hit the water like the wash from a propellor and then zooming out horzontally at apeed.

Wasnt there a famous lake sailing race that had a microbirst hit the lake? There were casualties as well i recall...

Supercells are ugly but thankfully for florida they are very rare there i think?

Same critter, different name. A derecho is a sort of line super cell, as opposed to a line squall or storm, though there are many different types. Hence the often massive size. The NOAA site I linked to is quite informative.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by jackdale

The school sailing vessel Concordia was sunk by a microburst.

Abandon Ship: The Sinking of the SV Concordia - Doc Zone | CBC-TV

Or not.

"Canada's Transportation Safety Board has finally released its report on the loss of the school ship Concordia, the 188-foot square-rigger that capsized and sank off the coast of Brazil back in February of last year. I was more than a little surprised by its conclusions: a) there was no microburst, as was reported by the captain and crew of the vessel; b) the ship's officers failed to follow guidance on securing the vessel and reducing sail area prior to the capsize."


CONCORDIA SINKING: Human Error NOT a Microburst

[Rakuflames]

Originally Posted by minaret

Same critter, different name. A derecho is a sort of line super cell, as opposed to a line squall or storm, though there are many different types. Hence the often massive size. The NOAA site I linked to is quite informative.

The kind of supercell you get in the midwest (I used to live in Missouri) is rare here, but we still get bow echoes. When forecasters (MO and FL) see bow echoes with rotation they issue a tornado warning whether or not one has been spotted.

We do get bow echoes, but rarely *big* tornadoes. Smaller ones are fairly common, but there are no tornado sirens here.

Never heard the term "derecho" before, which surprises me coming from tornado country.

Waterspouts often come on land. They rarely last very long although several months ago one did. Still not as big or damaging as the kind of tornadoes you see in the center of the country.

[Rakuflames]

Originally Posted by jackdale

The school sailing vessel Concordia was sunk by a microburst.

Abandon Ship: The Sinking of the SV Concordia - Doc Zone | CBC-TV

An airliner was downed by one in St. Louis while landing, in the mid-70's.

[minaret]

Microburst pic and link. Looks like no fun for cruisers...



Latitude 38 - 'Lectronic Latitude

[sabray]

Yep I was out that evening. Not a very well declared event forecasting wise. I checked doplar before dropping the mooring. Looked very nasty. At that time no warnings of the event were out. I opted to stay on the mooring. Holy sh@""" cow.
Good move on my part. When we returned on Sunday we could not Drive home. The roads were still closed.

[zeehag]

i saw the damage that hotspur received--they came here after that incident for repairs, then went farther north for them, after all. good folks. their tales of this storm were captivating and riveting--intense experience.
those storms are much more intense than anything i saw off west florida coast when i was there--even the extreme storms were moderate next to these horrific things.

by the way--hotspur is not a brown searunner but is a monohull..tartan 42 or so.

[Rakuflames]

Originally Posted by avb3

I'm not aware under what possible circumstances the Tampa Bay area could experience a katabatic wind.

I know from the order of the posts it may appear that I was talk about a katabatic wind, but I was not. An elevation of 20' is a "hill" here.

Thanks for removing my post, by the way. You're right; I never should have said "Oh for heaven's sake."

The point was that since I do a lot of Florida coastal cruising, it's important for me to pay attention to land-based weather. The collision of the Easterlies and the west seabreeze that kicks up here most days can form severe storms which can and sometimes do have serious consequences for coastal cruisers. Throw in a cold front from the north and you can have a real mess. Then you have a southerly wind racing across the front.

But that's all very predictable.

The "pop-up" thunderstorms are different. Obviously the air is unstable, but in the summer -- and this year, even into October so far, we typically have a 30-40% chance of thunderstorms, but they can't always tell us where they will develop except in the vaguest of ways. So you have the choice of not sailing or being prepared for a storm -- pardon me, a thunderstorm.

[minaret]

Originally Posted by s/v Beth

That made me laugh so hard my arm hurt :-) I will probably go get redosed with pain meds because of you!:-)
My wind was predictable because(from the charts anyway) we had just come around a cliff and all that cold air from the Olympic mountains just avalanched on us. l can see that now. Couldn't see anything but fog then.

Wanna post a google map pic of the location where you were struck down by the foul "Newt" wind so we know where to look out for what sounds like sudden exposure to katabatics off of the Olympics?
Glad we could make you chuckle while you are recovering...

[Rakuflames]

Originally Posted by zeehag

impressive pix .. if i saw one coming at me---holy sheets, mon---anchor and pray--douse everything and make boat s small as possible.
what is speed of winds in those??

tampa bay is inellegible for katabatic winds. they DO have severe tboomers with up to 70some knots--measured and stated by noaa.......sometimes these stay around for a few hours.

whatever wind newt found should well bear his name....

The ones that stick around the longest aren't connected to any weather system and there's no front around or other feature to make them move. "They" say that the Tampa area has more lightning strikes than anywhere else in the country, but it's more inland than near the water. But every year we hear about some weird lightning strike. Just a couple of weeks ago a high school football player was critically injured by a lightning strike out of a blue sky.

[zeehag]

i enjoyed sailing in and near tampa bay, and rest of west florida --we sailed like wind in the tboomers they have daily there--for a year..was fun. scary but great weather experience. the storms come up at certain time every day and dissipate rapidly. to avoid these , just sail 40 miles off coast.
the funnest weather to learn anywhere is the localized weather patterns--is different everywhere and all places have quirks and traps. is fun to learn how to spot them before they get to you. challenging and fun.