Is a Waterspout a Tornado?

July 23, 2021 // Article by: Bobby Bianco

Let's start with the basics, what is a waterspout?

A waterspout is a rotating column of air which can develop in 2 different ways. The first way is when a rotating thunderstorm moves over a body of water and produces a waterspout. The second way a waterspout can develop is in fair weather. It can be a sunny day with only a few cumulus clouds over a body of water, and a waterspout will form.

This is likely a tornadic waterspout based on the choppiness of the water and wall/shelf cloud (low lying clouds which usually develop in strong thunderstorms)

This is a little trickier of a situation because you do not need a strong thunderstorm in order to produce one. These can be a result of surface vorticity (spin at the surface of the water), boundaries of wind colliding, or a temperature difference. If there are light showers over a body of water, they produce weak "outflow boundaries". These are just lines of wind moving outward from the shower and can cause localized areas of spin. With fair weather waterspouts, they typically develop from the surface up. As the spin persists at the surface, it can be transferred up to the cloud via thermodynamics. Thermals mix up in the atmosphere and advect the spin upwards with it and these areas can result in a column of spinning air. If there is a column from the cloud to the surface and you can see water being spewed up, it is considered a waterspout. To make it classic looking, you would just need the funnel and all that requires is condensation. 

The key difference between fair weather waterspouts and tornadoes is, tornadoes form from the cloud with rotation in the cloud being transferred to the surface. Waterspouts form from the surface and transfers the rotation upwards to the cloud. 

All in all, if a waterspout forms from a thunderstorm with rotation in the clouds, it is technically considered a tornado. If there is a shower without rotation, or regular cumulus clouds, this is not considered a tornado. Typically, these are accompanied by "weak" winds, calm surfaces and low level instability. However, if there is a tornadic waterspout, they can have strong winds (usually up to EF-1 or 2 strength, though generally less), rough seas, gusty straight-line winds and even hail. Tornadic waterspouts can result in damage to boats, injuries and if they move inland, damage to structures just like a regular tornado. Fair weather waterspouts can also damage boats and even capsize them, but on land, there might be some displaced sand or a few umbrellas flying around. Otherwise, they tend to weaken very quickly and do not proceed to move inland.

 

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