Questions about waterspouts?

[wxtopic]

I have taken interests in waterspouts. I was wondering if weaker ones are still deadly (minus drowning) and do they pick up debris from the water such as fish and stuff like that?

Thanks...

-Shawn Gossman, silwxinc@gmail.com

[meteorologist]

Hi

Typically waterspouts have wind and water as their primary ingredients and not solids like fish. The reason that is is because the water in a waterspout is gathered from the immediate surface and not deeper where the fish reside.

Here are a couple of links you may find interesting:

http://marquja.blogspot.com/

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080105190553AAim8Pz

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/mlb/spout.html

http://www.weatheranswer.com/public/Waterspout_Adriatic_Sea_Croatia_080406_.avi

[wall_cloud]

water spout winds are typically relatively weak compared to their land counterparts. The main reason is because they develop via different processes. That said, waterspouts can produce wind speeds rivalling that of low end severe thunderstorms (60-70 mph) so damage to small craft is possible. Debris is the biggest concern with tornadoes and unless a landspout strikes a vessell, there is nothing to pick up. Sure, landspouts can cause fatal injury, but these are few and far between given the wind speeds and the lower density of people out on the water.

[Ed Mahmoud]

Some day I'd like a full multi-paragraph description on tropical funnels and the thin rope waterspouts I have seen over Gulf waters, and why they seem to favor low shear, as compared to their cousins of "Tornado Alley".

[Aslkahuna]

It would require digging way back, but Weatherwise had such an article on waterspouts around the Keys many years ago. Those spouts develop as a result of vorticity in the low levels developing as a result of horizontal shear along a convergence line producing showers which occurs when the shower outflow interacts with the low level convergence. We see a similar occurrence on occasion here in AZ when a dust devil near a thunderstorm is stretched by the storm outflow until it makes contact with the cloudbase becoming a type of landspout tornado.

Steve