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ICWR.ca observer
This waterspout formed over Lake Erie on Sunday. The photo was taken looking east towards Cleveland, Ohio, from Lorain, Ohio.
The Cleveland Browns football team hosted a special pregame show on Sunday: a waterspout seen from the lakeside stadium before sputtering out harmlessly. It was one of 13 waterspouts reported over Lake Erie on Sunday and part of what's already a record year for sightings on the Great Lakes.
"2012 has seen so far a total of 154 waterspouts," Wade Szilagyi, a meteorologist with Canada's weather service and director of the International Centre for Waterspout Research, told NBC News.
"This shatters the old record of 94 waterspouts reported in 2003," he said, noting that the season runs into fall so the number will go higher.
Great Lakes waterspout records go back to 1994 and this summer also saw a new single-day record: 30 waterspouts reported on Sept. 9.
Szilagyi suspects two factors are at work: "a hot summer resulting in very warm water," which helps create the waterspouts, and increased use of social media for reporting them.
"Technology is improving through Twitter, Facebook, cell phone pics, etc.," he noted. "In the past we had a limited number of sources such as Coast Guard, pilot reports, ship reports, weather observations."
"In the future, as our climate gets warmer, thus heating the lakes, and as social media use increases even more, I expect increasing numbers of reported waterspouts," he added. "However, just like the stock market, there will be dips because some summers will be cool, but this will be less and less frequent with time."
Sunday's activity was part of a weekend-long outbreak that started Friday on Lake Superior. Four waterspouts were sighted that day, followed by eight on Saturday as cold air from Canada moved down and across the warmer lakes.
Szilagyi was actually able to predict the outbreak using an index he fully implemented this year after working on it for 18 years.
"We can now predict conditions that are favorable for waterspout development several days in advance," he said.
The weekend activity also caught the attention of locals who tweeted dozens of images, as well as other weather experts.
Weather.com, for one, posted images and a video.
NBC News meteorologist Bill Karins retweeted a photo of the spout near Cleveland Browns Stadium.
icwa.org
This Great Lakes map shows the forecast for waterspouts on Monday. Red is the highest danger in the system devised by Wade Szilagyi.
"This one was weak and wouldn't have done much damage had it moved on shore," he noted. But had it done so, he added, it would have been categorized as a weak tornado.
"Lots of people don't realize waterspouts happen frequently during warm months over the Great Lakes -- most people think Florida and the Keys are where they are the most frequent," he added.
As for those Cleveland fans who saw the spout, their team lost on Sunday but Mother Nature did provide a second treat, this time post-game: a double rainbow, Cleveland's newsnet5.com reported.
More content from NBCNews.com:
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Obama is STEALING the election! Our ambassadors are being RAPED! Goats are lying down with lambs! The money is being stolen...buy GOLD. Did I mention, Obama's a communist!
Oh, lordy, lordy where's FOX News when you need to stop liberal scum from talking about double rainbows and waterspouts when a Muslim Kenyan is "the great leader!"
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! RUN FOR THE HILLS!
Psych. Psych. Super-Psych.
Sorry about that people, I just wanted to feel what it felt like to be one of these insane posters.
Nice article BTW.
Cut your meds by half.
Someone must have been standing near one of those waterspouts.
"one of those"?
You are. Congrats.
Waterspouts are pretty...from a safe distance. Get used to it...global warming, whatever mythos you subscribe to, is empirical, demonstrable, dangerous reality- and we're past the tipping point.
Lord Foxdrake 360
"Muslim Kenyan is "the great leader!"
The only great leader in the muslim world is an imaginary one, because the nonprophet mohammed and the false god allah are not one of them. Ohhhh, I forgot, you have a false god and a false prophet that can't defend themselves so the people do it for them! I laugh at your puny false god and fake prophet. :)
The only one that came out talking religion and heading to the hills is YOU!!!
Dude. Dude. Dude.
How obtuse can you be? Don't you know sarcasm when it hits you in the face?
Lord Foxdrake - Great Post!
Typical, public-schooled, ignorant twat. Allah is Arabic for God. Which God you ask? The God of Abraham and Moses. You see, Muslims stole the Hebrew God, just like Christians did. At least Muslims revere your Jesus. Do you know what Jews think about Jesus? According to their most holy book, the Talmud, Jesus is a heretic who is burning in hot excrement for all eternity. His mother, Mary, is a whore who slept with many men.
Yeah, your allegiances are absurd.
Double Rainbooow!!! What does it mean??
It means that whoever wrote the article doesn't know there is always a double rainbow, though the second one is usually difficult to see.
Yet if you look at the map in this article and then check the National Weather Service you will find that the area where waterspouts are predicted is along the leading edge of a low (cold front). It is the interaction of cold air aloft and warm moist air below that creates instability in the atmosphere and fuels clouds and storms.
http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/noaa/noaa.gif
People keep harping on warm and hot when it is cold that matters. Otherwise waterspout numbers would have skyrocketed during the July heatwave when a high pressure STABLE air mass was in place.
People really ought to take the National Weather Services free Skywarn class.
Here is an article on the recent waterspouts.
http://articles.petoskeynews.com/2012-09-19/waterspouts_33957754
Again. It is cold that matters.
No, it is THE TEMPERATURE DIFFERENTIAL that matters. When our Great Lakes are much warmer than usual (and they are), then even slightly chilly air is sufficient to offset the warmer water.
I've lived next to the Great Lakes for pretty much all of my life, and sailed on all of them. I know these "lakes" (inland seas, really) well. The Great Lakes are setting record high temperatures. Air temperatures are this month pretty much average for the season. Hence, greater temp differential and a many-fold increase in waterspouts.
Nice cherry picking of data there economykiller - as usual for your posts.
Critical times hard to deal with, will be here.
Man made Global Warming is the greatest hoax since, well, ever.
All,
I have a new scientific theory that links the waterspouts, fish kills and bird kills. They are all triggered by a high velocity dark matter particle orbiting into the earth and back out at the location of the waterspout. The particle is creating a shockwave underwater killing fish and collapsing atmospheric gasses in the atmosphere killing birds and creating the waterspout. Large ones can create earthquakes, hurricanes and volcanoes. It is all on my blog @ darkmattersalot.com