2 water spouts LI Sound (pics)

nk235 · #1 (**permalink**) 08-11-2008

Went out for a sail tonight but returned after half an hour of not really any winds. As soon as I tied up to my mooring and locked up the boat and was waiting for the launch to pick me up from my mooring in in Mt. Sinai, I looked North West over the sound and two distinct funnel clouds coming from a pitch black sky that wasn't even remotley there 5 minutes ago. Two minutes later both funnel clouds tocuhed down onto the sound and you could see from the water to about half way up the swirl a wider cone of water, wind and what looked like debri swirling around both water spouts. I got on the radio and warned the marina, launch and any surrounding boats. Everyone made it in and went down to the beach to watch these things. They stayed down for about 2-3 minutes then dissapated but were followed by a real nasty thunderstorm cell that is still going on. (started at around 8pm tonight. Now close to 11pm)

I have never seen a water spout before and it was amazing and scary at the same time. I am just glad I came in when I did. I have also never seen a such a thunderstorn cell form so fast out of clear skys and turn into such a severe storm as the one we are having now.

Forgive these pictures as they are from my cell phone but if you were actually there you could clearly see these things touch down and they didn't look so tiny as they do on the low res cell phone images.

The first couple show the two forming before they touched down and the middle ones show the two and if you look closely you can see the wider lower cloud around them from all the water it sucked up. It doesn't show on the picture but you could easily see the inner funnel the whole way through that lower black circulating cloud The last picture is what the sky looked like after the water spouts dissipated. 15 minutes earlier that same patch of sky was clear. These pictures don't do them justice but its better than nothing.

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Hartley18 · #2 (**permalink**) 08-11-2008

Impressive pics! Well done!!

I'm amazed at how still the water is. The only time I've ever seen water spouts was in the Tasman Sea several miles off the coast and it wasn't like that at all.

CalebD · #3 (**permalink**) 08-12-2008

Yes, impressive pics considering it was a cell phone. Just a few days earlier in Oyster Bay I posted a thread about a water spout that Newsday had photos of: http://www.sailnet.com/forums/genera...pened-you.html
The next day I went to bail my sailing dinghy out and saw a similar cloud formation approaching (last Friday). I ended up bailing out on finishing my bailing job and decided to row the shore against the building wind out of the north. It would seem that water spouts around Long Island and the whole North East are much more common than we thought they were.
Feel any safer now?
Learn to read the clouds: low, dark, ragged, swirling with rain, wind, lightning and hail = dangerous. NOAA had a tornado warning box over the north shore of LI today. I saw it from my computer while safe on my couch.
NY is the new Florida and 50 is the new 40?
Guess I'll be working in the heat until I'm the new 80.

RickQuann · #4 (**permalink**) 08-12-2008

good pics nk235, thanks for sharing

chuck5499 · #5 (**permalink**) 08-12-2008

NK235 - great pics and thanks for sharing - i have seen them as my home port is miami - i came up here to miss those things and enjoy all long island sound has to offer - right now it seems all i do is run from hidey hole to hidey hole - i was in oyster bay when the first one came through and the tornado warnings were something else yesterday - watched the storms build and move on ships radar - pretty amazing
hope the weather gets better but understand this has been a bad summer for you folks here
i can always come back next year - hopefully the elizabeth islands will be better
chuck and svsoulmates
ki4sry
on the hook in joshua cove, ct

cnbnichols · #6 (**permalink**) 08-12-2008

Cool Pictures. We saw what looked like waterspouts at a distance on Sunday afternoon outside of Boston.

nk235 · #7 (**permalink**) 08-12-2008

First thing I did at work today was check Newsday to see if anyone else had got any better pictures and they sure did. Here is what they looked like with a better camera.

Also I agree with you Chuck that this weather has been ridiculous. I don't remeber it being this bad with this many severe storms occuring every single day. The storm during the day yesterday destroyed my dodger and just about every single other power boat and sailboat's vinyl and canvas work in Mt. Sinai harbor. I wasn't there but when I was taking the launch out the woman driving said cars got destroyed and tons of boats vinyle because their was baseball sized chunks of hail. If you have a boat in that harbor and there was exposed vinyl chances are its wrecked.

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