During the summer of 1967, when I was working as a Hurricane Specialist at NOAA's National Hurricane Center, I had my first encounter with a phenomenon that would later become the focus of much of my professional life: a waterspout. I was flying with fellow graduate students in a friend's aircraft from Key West to Miami when I noticed a building line of cumulus congestus halfway up the Keys, just south of Lower Matecumbe Key. During the next hour, we circled a series of waterspouts moving toward Matecumbe Key. This was a phenomenon I had read about but had never witnessed. We were transfixed by what we saw, especially the details of the waterspout funnel-walls, which were sometimes adorned with wave-like undulations, and the "wet whirlwind" of spray at its base that was followed by a narrow wake of disturbed sea surface.
展开▼
