Waterspouts blamed for sinking of luxury ship carrying British tech billionaire Mike Lynch in Italy To be call an unusual “black swan” event. But scientists believe this type of marine cyclone is becoming more common due to global warming.
While the cause of the sinking Bayesian While not officially confirmed, weather conditions and witness reports from Sicily, where the yacht was anchored offshore, have led experts to suspect a waterspout, a vortex column of air and water mist. The key ingredient for tornado formation is warm water—and the past year has seen the ocean surface warm to record breaking temperaturepartly due to climate change.
“If this rate of warming continues in the future, it is very likely that these phenomena will become more common rather than rare,” said Michalis Sioutas, a Greek meteorologist who studies tornadoes and is a board member of the Hellenic Meteorological Society. “It is very possible to talk about tornadoes or even tornadoes and extremely strong storms becoming commonplace.”
Length 180 feet Bayesian sank in minutes after a sudden storm with strong winds and a lightning strike snapped the mast around 4am on Monday. Fifteen people on board were rescued and one person was found dead. Six people are missing, including British tech billionaire Mike Lynch, who was recently cleared of fraud in the sale of his company to Hewlett-Packard. On Wednesday, the bodies of five people were recovered from the sunken ship but have not yet been identified.
Fisherman saw A waterspout was heard near the yacht just before it sank, and a nearby sailboat was thrown overboard by captain Karsten Borner. call a “fierce storm”, which he trust turn upside down BayesianExperts say conditions are ripe for a tornado to form.
This extreme weather phenomenon occurs when warm, moist air rises rapidly over water, spinning as winds change direction at different altitudes. The result is a long, curving funnel of spray between the water and the clouds, gradually narrowing as it rises as high as 10,000 feet into the sky.
It comes in two flavors. The vanilla one is more fair weather tornadoforms in relatively calm and sunny conditions, often under a wavy cumulus cloud. It occurs more frequently in places like the Great Lakes and the Florida Keys, reaching wind speeds of 50 miles per hour and usually dissipates before it can cause significant damage.
Then there are the violent waterspouts, essentially tornadoes over water, which are “a whole other beast,” according to Wade Szilagyi, a retired forecaster with Meteorological Canada who now directs the International Centre for Waterspout Research. These tornadoes can move from land to water, or vice versa, and twist at speeds of 125 miles per hour or more. They’ve been known to hurl debris, tear apart buildings and capsize boats.
