Weekend boaters and Fort De Soto Park visitors were treated to a rare weather spectacle Sunday when two waterspouts spun up over Tampa Bay east of Anna Maria Island.<\/p>\n
While waterspouts are as ordinary in Florida as tornadoes in Oklahoma, it\u2019s not every day you\u2019d see a pair dance along the coast, said Stephen Shiveley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service\u2019s Ruskin office.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the Midwest, if you see a double tornado, that\u2019s like almost once-in-a-generation-type thing. But here it\u2019s a little bit more common. We\u2019ll get a double waterspout at least once every couple years,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s still pretty rare.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waterspouts, likened to tornadoes over water, can form when cool, dense gusts of air from a thunderstorm crash into a sea breeze. Wind colliding from all directions then starts to rotate and form a spout. If one crosses onto land, it can become a destructive tornado.<\/p>\n
Luckily, the spouts on Sunday could only be marveled at from a distance and did not press well-developed, Shiveley said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was the important thing,\u201d he said. \u201cWe never got any reports of boaters impacted \u2014 that didn\u2019t bother them.”<\/p>\n
The Ruskin station reported the first spout about 5:30 p.m. Sunday. About five or 10 minutes later, its twin showed up. Both had dissipated within 30 minutes, Shiveley said. Photos and videos<\/a> taken by those lucky enough to catch a glimpse of the waterspouts flooded social media Sunday night, some showing a close shot of one spout churning violently above the water.<\/p>\n \u201cThese were two pretty well-developed waterspouts that we saw, which is a little bit more unique to see than our typical waterspouts,\u201d Shiveley said. \u201cA lot of them are very weak \u2014 like pencil-thin ones you see off in the distance.\u201d<\/p>\n What made Sunday\u2019s spouts more uncommon was that the Tampa Bay area is not experiencing a weather \u201cregime\u201d that creates optimal conditions for recurrent waterspouts. Florida meteorologists typically expect waterspouts to occur in the mornings when southwesterly or westerly winds are blowing. <\/p>\n