waterspout

A tornado occurring over a large body of water, evolving entirely over it or partly over dry land, though it tends to dissipate on reaching the shore. Some authors distinguish between tornadic and non-tornadic waterspouts, depending on whether or not the rotating column of water, associated with the air vortex, hangs down from a storm cloud. It is most common for waterspouts to be weaker than land tornadoes and to hang down from cumuliform clouds, not always cumulonimbus (storm clouds). It is also relatively frequent for several of them to form in a line. The upper part of the waterspout, connected to the base of the cloud from which it hangs, takes the shape of an inverted cone (funnel cloud) and connects with the sea surface via a narrow, often twisted, cloud column. The lower part of that column is surrounded by a set of suspended water drops and droplets, endowed with abrupt movements (spray sleeve/spray vortex), which are pulled up from the sea surface by the effect of the waterspout's intense suction, reaching several dozen meters in height (more than 100 m in some cases).