Bob Hartig
EF5
With waterspouts in the marine forecast for Lake Michigan last Saturday, I headed to the lakeshore with Kurt Hulst in the hopes of seeing a few. We didn't, leaving our personal waterspout intercept records of zero encounters untarnished, but the chase wasn't entirely fruitless. Hearing about it prompted my buddy Mike Kovalchick to send me this paper on waterspouts and the waterspout nomogram.
I'd read of the nomogram before but never knew what it was. It's an easy-to-understand and very useful chart that tells at a glance whether the lake environment is favorable for spouts. I extrapolated a few simple parameters from the nomogram; you can check them out in my blog.
Interestingly, the aforementioned paper goes beyond the usual categorization of waterspouts into mesocyclone and non-mesocyclone. It divides spouts into tornadic, upper low, lake breeze, and winter.
Just thought I'd toss this topic out for discussion, as the waterspout season is ramping up and offers a decent diversion for Great Lakes and coastal chasers when the Plains aren't lighting up.
I'd read of the nomogram before but never knew what it was. It's an easy-to-understand and very useful chart that tells at a glance whether the lake environment is favorable for spouts. I extrapolated a few simple parameters from the nomogram; you can check them out in my blog.
Interestingly, the aforementioned paper goes beyond the usual categorization of waterspouts into mesocyclone and non-mesocyclone. It divides spouts into tornadic, upper low, lake breeze, and winter.
Just thought I'd toss this topic out for discussion, as the waterspout season is ramping up and offers a decent diversion for Great Lakes and coastal chasers when the Plains aren't lighting up.
