Video follows. The National Weather Service in Eureka writes:
A waterspout developed over Humboldt Bay Thursday, January 25th around 4:40 pm and moved through the Woodley Island Marina, dissipating only a minute or so later. Security cameras on the island captured the waterspout moving through the marina onto the island. Thankfully, the damage reported was minor. However, because the waterspout moved onto land, it technically became a tornado. This is the first confirmed tornado in the NWS Eureka forecasting area (Mendocino, Trinity, Del Norte, and Humboldt counties) since the Fort Bragg tornado on December 5th, 1998.
Of course, I’m sure some alarmist will jump at the chance to say it happened because of “climate change”.
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This was a water spout/tornado. Formed over water then came ashore.
June 28, 1924: Lorain Tornado
Link to enlarged image. The deadliest tornado in Ohio history struck Lorain and Sandusky on Saturday, June 28, 1924. This was not the largest or strongest tornado to occur in Ohio, but the violent storm struck an urban center where thousands of people were put at risk. There were 85 fatalities, 72 of which occurred in Lorain.
The Lorain Tornado formed over Sandusky Bay and passed eastward, striking the northern edge of Sandusky at 4:35 PM. A nine city block area was damaged, bounded by Adams, Market, Washington Park, and the waterfront. One hundred homes and 25 businesses were destroyed in Sandusky. There were eight deaths in Sandusky.
The tornado continued over Lake Erie before coming ashore at the Lorain Municipal Bath House in Lakeview Park. Buildings were damaged for 35 blocks along Broadway and at least 200 automobiles were buried in bricks and other debris. More than 1000 homes were damaged and 500 destroyed in Lorain. All downtown businesses sustained some damage. The death toll of 15 in the State Theater is the most ever killed by a tornado in one building in Ohio. Dozens of doctors and hundreds of nurses arrived in Lorain Saturday night from Cleveland to attend to the injured. A second tornado touched down west of Vickery in Sandusky County and traveled eastward toward Castalia. Another formed over Huron Township in Erie County. A fourth tornado touched down at about 6 PM near Geauga Lake and traveled 20 miles across northern Portage County. Three farmers were killed in their milking barns north of Mantua.
Source: ohiohistory.org
This Ohio waterspout/tornado is a stereotypical to extreme example of a “tornadic waterspout”, with wind force, size, and path length great enough to arouse suspicion that this was a “supercell tornado” as opposed to either the “fair weather waterspout” (which happens in the tropics, or in tropical-like weather in subtropical areas in the summer), or another small short-lived kind of tornado, usually of or close to F1/EF1 strength and frequently of F0/EF0 strength, that sometimes occurs in squall lines.
It was a cloaked Klingon Bird of Prey.
Here it is uncloaked.
http://i63.tinypic.com/2vnngx5.png
BTW, has anyone’s tugboat gone missing?
The point (of my sarcasm) being my science fiction explanation (Klingon spaceship) of this natural event is as good as, and certainly more entertaining, than invoking the MagicMolecule™ science fiction.
If *that* was a tornado, then we have dozens of “tornadoes” in southern Arizona every day.
SoArizona/Australian dust devils are shortwave, surface-heated thermal driven. Just as on Mars.
Explanation: A large parcel of surface (solar shortwave heated) air next to a dry, desert floor starts rising (aka, a thermal) due to buoyancy. As it rises, cooler, surrounding surface air rushes in, and then it is sucked upwards into the ascending thermal. A Dust devil ensues as the thermal rises. The low pressure of the rising air mass (thermal) creates a CCW cyclone.
This is very different mechanism from a water-spout, but it is still one of buoyancy. In the case of the water-spout, the cold air aloft essentially is pulling the warmer surface air mass. Solar SW heating of the surface is not the mechanism as is a dust devil.
Key difference: where the Proximate energy for the vortex is coming from.
clarification: CCW in the Northern Hemisphere, CW in the SH (down-under).
When we watch the toilet water spin, it is going downwards.
When we watch an atmospheric vortex, the air is going upwards. Always!!! It is a low-pressure. Air is ascending. The in-rushing surface air sprials in. A vortex ensues.
The atmospheric Low pressure is an inverted toilet bowl as the air parcel rises.
I was looking for the flush, but couldn’t find it?
Is it Royal?
I had a dust devil in my garden bigger than that. Invisible except for the leaves and loose grass it had picked up. Fascinating and wondrous to see.
I like the name a wet dust devil. 🙂 I went to school in a building shaped somewhat like an H. The interior corners made perfect wind patterns for the formation of dust devils. They were very frequent. We used to make paper helicopters and launch them near the dust devils and watch the helicopters take off and sail up into the sky and disappear over the roof.
I’ve seen more powerful vortices of stuff flushing down my toilet bowl.
I have always agreed with the ancient Greeks that these whirls are actually lesser angels, called “zephyrs”. They have a mind of their own, and can be mischievous. I saw this one time when I was just finishing up a leaf-raking job for a rich man with a palatial house that had two wings extending to the northeast and northwest. His lawn stepped down through a series of terraces to a road, and across the road was a pasture, and at the far side of the pasture I saw a dust-devil of leaves start whirling. I immediately muttered, “Don’t you dare”, but the whirl of leaves came steadily across the pasture, growing larger and larger and containing more and more leaves. It crossed the road and came up between the two wings of the house and proceeded to promptly die, dumping around three inches of leaves over the area I had just finished raking. It looked worse than before I had begun. And wouldn’t you know it? My wealthy employer chose just then to come out to see how I was getting along with the job. He shot me the funniest expression.
These zephyrs are not always unhelpful. Just last week I was struggling to get a campfire going out in a pasture at my Childcare, but freezing rain had coated all my wood with ice and the fire was barely smoldering. I was huffing and puffing, trying to get the fire hot enough to dry the wood by being a human bellows. Just then a most inconsequential-seeming whirl of leaves came across the pasture. Perhaps because of the fire’s slight updraft, it swerved to the fire and just stopped there for around 45 seconds. It seemed to get bigger due to the fire’s heat, and all the coals glowed cherry red as it whirled its wind around the fire. By the time it moved off the fire was blazing. I tipped my hat and thanked that particular zephyr, as it wandered away into the woods.
The folks in Joplin Missouri, Tuscaloosa Alabama, and Xenia Ohio would get a kick out of this article
Atmospherically speaking, that wasn’t even a popcorn fart.
A semi tractor/trailer passing at 70 mph can make a bigger ‘vortex’ than that!
66 replies. not one person interested in what to me is by far the most important and interesting question : what causes tornados? u wuwt lot are a strange breed, superficially flocking to a nature blog, but rarely trying to understand it. are u any better than the cagw lot u oppose? Or is it a case of dr zeus butter battle book for 99% of u?
[A question, to be sure. But, was the origin of the twisting winds under extreme thunderstorms that cause dozens of “generic tornadoes” over the MidWest and south every year ever brought up before you asked? .mod]