Waterspout
A waterspout is a funnel cloud over water. It is a nonsupercell tornado over water. Waterspouts do not suck up water; the water seen in the main funnel cloud is actually water droplets formed by condensation.[1] It is weaker than most of its land counterparts.[2]
Types
Non-tornadic
Waterspouts that are not associated with a rotating updraft of a supercell thunderstorm, are known as "nontornadic" or "fair-weather waterspouts", and are by far the most common type.[3]
Fair-weather waterspouts occur in coastal waters and are associated with dark, flat-bottomed, developing convective cumulus towers.
Snowspout
A winter waterspout, also known as a snow devil, an icespout, an ice devil, a snonado, or a snowspout, is a very rare meteorological phenomenon in which a vortex from snow develops that looks like a waterspout.[4] One does not know much about this rare happening and there are only six known pictures of this event so far.
There are three main things that produce a winter waterspout:
- Very cold temperatures present over a body of warm water enough to produce fog that looks like steam above the water's surface. This usually needs temperatures of -18 °C or colder if the water temperature is no warmer than 5 °C.
- Lake-effect snows in a small, enclosed or banded formation must be present and going on.
- The wind speed has to be slow, usually less than 5 knots (9.25 km/h).
Waterspout Media
Five stages of a fair-weather waterspout lifecycle
Tornadic waterspout off the coast of Punta Gorda, Florida, caused by a severe thunderstorm, 15 July 2005
Waterspout filmed off Anglesey, Wales, by an RAF Search and Rescue crew, 15 November 2010
Illustration from the book The Philosophy of Storms, published in 1841
A family of four waterspouts seen on Lake Huron, 9 September 1999
Four waterspouts seen in the Florida Keys, 5 June 2009
Waterspout in the Tasman Sea, 29 January 2009
Related pages
References
- ↑ Encyclopædia Britannica (2009). "Waterspout". Retrieved 28 August 2009.
- ↑ Glossary of Meteorology. Waterspout. Archived 2012-01-18 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved on 2006-10-25.
- ↑ Gale Schools. Fair weather waterspout. Archived 2008-04-21 at the Wayback Machine Retrieved on 2006-10-25.
- ↑ "weather.com - Glossary". Archived from the original on 2008-08-01. Retrieved 2012-04-03.
Other websites
- British and European Tornado Extremes Archived 2007-08-14 at the Wayback Machine
- A series of pictures from the boat Nicorette getting impressively close to the south coast tornadic waterspout.
- USA Today online article on waterspouts Archived 2012-09-07 at the Wayback Machine
- Home video of a waterspout on Long Island Sound on 27 September 2006 Archived 29 June 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- Pictures of cold-core waterspouts over Lake Michigan on 30 September 2006. Archived from the original on March 102007.
- http://aoss-research.engin.umich.edu/PlanetaryEnvironmentResearchLaboratory/ Archived 2008-04-08 at the Wayback Machine