Weekend waterspouts across Great Lakes ‘shatter the old record of 94 waterspouts reported in 2003’

By Miguel Llanos, NBC News
24 September 2012 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. […]

Weekend waterspouts across Great Lakes are part of record year