Waterspouts seen around the region
Farm assistant John Karl Erickson wasn’t surprised when he spotted a waterspout forming off the Taranaki coast early yesterday morning.
‘‘I used to work on a fishing boat out here off the coast and we used to see them all the time,’’ Erickson said. ‘‘The skipper of the boat said you’d rather stay away from them.’’
He was milking the cows at Gobel’s Farm on Greenwood Rd, Oakura, at 6.30am when he saw
the water spout appear and decided to take a photo.
‘‘I don’t usually have my phone on me in the morning but I had my phone on me this morning so I just pulled it out and took a quick pic.’’
He said it lasted for 10 minutes and stayed the same size before dissipating.
‘‘When it stopped it sort of looked like it had exploded and you could see all the water dropping out that it had picked up.’’
Waterspouts were also spotted off the coast of New Plymouth before disappearing after 7.30am.
MetService meteorologist
Claire Flynn said that the air over Taranaki was cooler than usual for this time of year and travelling over a warmer sea surface, which contributes to the forming of waterspouts.
‘‘Water spouts can form on shower clouds (towering cumulus) or thunderstorm clouds (cumulonimbus).
‘‘The ideal situation for water spouts to form off the coast of Taranaki is when we have relatively cool air over relatively warm sea surface temperatures, and also some low-level ‘helicity’, which is a measure of how much the wind changes direction with
height,’’ she said.
It was often too hard for the MetService to pick up on waterspouts because they are small-scale weather features, Flynn said.
‘‘Waterspouts are not uncommon, but it is difficult to put a figure on exactly how often they form. They are generally too small to be picked up by our weather radar. As such, there is no systematic way of recording when they occur – we rely on reports from the public of this kind of thing,’’ she said.
Flynn also said although they are weaker than tornadoes over
land she wouldn’t advise anyone to approach a waterspout if they were out on the ocean.