Waterspout!
 

Last Friday we had a massive waterspout just off the coast.

Here's what it looked like from my office (note: I didn't take this picture but it was taken a few floors above my office)
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/219/5...cf6fdc.jpg?v=0

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/192/5...fde67e.jpg?v=0

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/189/5...84bafd.jpg?v=0

Here are some other shots
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/229/5...2bc91389_o.jpg

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/226/5...18a079.jpg?v=0

I was amazed both at the size of this thing but also at how long it lasted.

Have you ever seen a tornado or a waterspout? Before this, I had only seen the aftermath of a few tornadoes .

This must be why the rain tastes salty sometimes.

Cool pix, sir!

Around here the tornadoes are dirty and carry trees away with them.

Did you see any flying fish?

Fantastic pics....we get some little ones on Lake Ontario....but nothing like that.

Those are awesome pics. The first two pics look an awful lot like a finger. Divine intervention? :D

Cool pics, and no I haven't actually ever seen a tornado or waterspout. I sure as hell hope I don't see a tornado any time soon.

wow..............too fuckin' cool Charlie.

Awesome shots. I saw a tornado once, but didn't actually know what it was-it had started off the Delaware River while I was parked nearby and was this orangey-swirly mass(I thought it was a fire); 10 minutes later, heading down the highway, it moved my car from the left lane into the right(apparently it was behind us). That was weird....my friend with me asked "What'd you just do??" I replied: "That wasn't me!!" The car 'jumped'. The papers the next day showed the damage it did, flipping small airplanes, tearing roofs off, etc.
We were always told that, during a storm, if the sky is a murky green-seek shelter. Don't know how true that is....

I saw a Tornado cross the highway just 2-3hundred foot in front of our car. We had to pull over and let it cross. The highway is pretty high so when it crossed it went right over a truck stop that was in the valley right beside the road. It was amazing.

How long was it on the ground for

I am told it was visible for about 15 minutes. I saw it for about 10 minutes.

Apparently they are fairly common here. There are five or six spotted each year.

Not necessarily seek shelter, but definitely keep an eye out and turn on the radio or TV to catch any watches or warnings that come out. Green clouds indicate hail, and hail is formed by very turbulent air pushing the water/ice back up into cold air - - in other words, you won't have hail, and therefore you won't have green skies, unless the air is really kickin' around up there, which means something is brewing.

I've seen lots of tornadoes myself - working with meteorologists who like to chase storms means you get to chase storms too. It's a hell of a rush when you see one of those things.

Haven't seen any tornadoes or waterspouts. We do get funnel clouds around here, small ones. One tore apart a home a couple years ago. In the early fall, when the fields are being plowed, I have seen some enormous dust devils. Those are neat.

I kind of would like to see a real tornado though.

I've lived in Kansas and Missouri my whole life. I've seen a couple tornadoes with my own eyes. It's pretty surreal and a bit awe inspiring. The situations I was in before the tornado formed the sky turned a sickly yellowish color and it seemed everything hushed and stood still for a moment. Very chilling in a way.

That's awesome, but scary.
We seldom get any of this bussiness in this part of the world (Australia). The best i've seen would be what my Dad would call "whirly winds" which are barely enough to knock you over.
We do get a good sized cyclone or 10 in summer though.
Green skies here = hail.

I'm fascinated and terrified of tornadoes and eat up pictures of them, but I've never seen one in real life. One hit Salt Lake City about 8 years ago 2 days after I moved from here to NC, and there were dozens of them in NC during the few years I lived there. One did come near our housing complex but I didn't see it; I did see the yellow sky though, and that was strange.

Nice pictures, Charlatan.

Wow!

I've seen a few over Lake Erie before, but NOTHING like that.

I am impressed.

Awesome pics.

Never seen a waterspout myself, but I have been privy to a couple of tornado sightings.

The first was in elementary school. A couple of us were stationed in such a way we could see out the windows and watched the thing inch closer. It destroyed the playground right outside our classroom and tore the roof off the headstart/kindergarten buildings about 30 feet away. Thankfully, they were all in the cafeteria when it hit.

The second, we watched for a while and when it dipped out of sight, stupid teenagers that we were, we got in the car to "chase it." I can't imagine what would have happened had we found it...

Holy cow damn awesome pics. I have seen a tornado as a kid but a waterspout just looks intense.

Bloody hell. Awesome really. Much better I think than a Tornado - are you sure you didn't photoshop them.

But where was this? Do you mean Lion City as in Singapore (that's what Wikipedia threw at me when I typed it in).

That'd explain the apartments and the ships, so I guess it is so.

No photoshopping was done with these shots... they are the real deal.

And yes, you have the right city.

All I have to say is, "damn, son!" That looks way cool.

The coolest weather thing I've seen was a major heat storm in Colorado. Pink-ish lightning bolts every couple of seconds, and it lasted around half an hour.

Tornadoes scare the living crap out of me. When I was younger, I lived in the midwest, and I had serious nightmares about the damn things. I'm sure i was the only person in the world that was scared by that Twister movie (and it wasn't just Bill Paxton's acting!).

funny how my Singaporean friends who are living there now don't believe they are real.. maybe they need to look outside more than just playing World of Warcraft.

the locals crack me up. many haven't even explored their island. I've been to many more parts of this country (a place that is just slightly larger than Toronto) than many of them have. traveling more than 30 minutes to go anywhere is a long trip.

i saw a bunch of those one day when i was living in virginia beach and they hung around the chesapeake bay for over 30 minutes. I watched a bunch of them approach the shore and dissapate as the winds hit them, then reform further out in the water. they had a pretty big audience on the shore and i could see them for about 10 miles when I was driving home, and better once I got to the shore. freaky.

That would probably count as a tornado. A tornado is basically a funnel cloud that touches the ground, and if it destroyed a house, I'd call that touching the ground.

BTW, you've got a PM.

My brother and I were out on lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans on his 26' sailboat last year. The weather started kicking up and we decided to drop anchor and wait it out. We were on deck trying to get everything tied off with wind and rain whipping at us when my brother pointed straight up and said something I couldn't hear through the wind. When I followed his hand there were clouds directly above us moving in a circle, and moving *fast*. We jumped below deck and closed the hatch, it was the roughest ride I've had in a boat. We never found out if it touched down or not, but damn that was a scary moment to look up and see that above you.

Oh, wow -- those are beautiful pictures.