Thanks, I’ll Have Another
So Tampa gets another waterspout yesterday, that is 7 waterspouts and 1 tornado in the past month and a half. This is the same general area I have been watching with persistent jet streams, high manatee deaths, fish kills, sinkholes, red tide, high doppler reflectivity (yes, there is a doppler radar centered there which adds some increased reflectivity, but overall it has been much more active between Tampa and Brevard than other areas). As I mentioned before and will again, a similar scenario played out on Lake Erie last summer. Along with the sinkholes, it is the primary reason I thought hurricane Sandy would turn towards Lake Erie last October. Beware, if my research is correct that area around Tampa has an increased vacuum concentration and it will pull low pressure systems that way as those strings decay and interact, this includes tropical storms and hurricanes.
It appears to me there is lots of confusion around waterspouts, as I have mentioned before. As an engineer, one thing that strikes me is that they appear NOT to follow the ideal gas law PV=nRT. I say that because typically, when you have elevated temperature in a gas, the pressure increases accordingly. But take a look at this excellent paper on waterspout research which shows you that the center of a waterspout is WARMER then surroundings and yet the pressure is LOWER. You should ask yourself HOW DOES NATURE DO THAT? I already made a post on waterspouts which shows further confusion. The guy in this article is really confused as he thinks it either FRICTION or LUCK. REALLY? FRICTION?, LUCK? Do you see our problem?
So what’s with all these waterspouts? Notoriously unpredictable, they pop up suddenly and disappear just as quickly. They are virtually impossible to forecast. But this summer they seem to be showing up frequently, including one particularly striking vortex on Tampa Bay Tuesday evening. “It’s just dumb luck,” said Mike Clay, head meteorologist for Bay News 9. The region is seeing an above-average amount of waterspouts this summer, keeping amateur photographers busy, but the increase is not a result of any one thing, Clay said. Waterspouts are fickle. They are a product of two or more weather systems colliding over water under the right mix of conditions. “If storms collide over Brandon, you don’t get a waterspout,” Clay said. Waterspouts, unlike large Midwestern tornadoes, tend to form almost instantly, giving little warning. As a system moves across land and water, Clay said, differences in friction may cause it to start rotating and turning into a funnel cloud.
Godspeed
Dark Matters a Lot 
