Now is the time of year when waterspouts start putting in an appearance on the Great Lakes. I had largely forgotten about spouts until a few days ago when my friend and fellow weather weenie Mike Kovalchick mentioned them in an email. Bing! A light blinked on in my head: That’s right! Waterspouts!

I’ve never seen a waterspout. But then, until last year about this time with my buddy Kurt Hulst, I’d never made a point of going out after them. Kurt and I busted that day, but maybe this year I’ll get lucky, provided I increase my chances by taking more opportunities to chase spouts.

I have zero experience forecasting waterspouts. Thankfully, there’s a snappy little graph called the Waterspout Nomogram that simplifies the process. Developed by Wade Szilagyi of the Meteorological Service of Canada, the Waterspout Nomogram provides a quick visual aid for determining when certain critical parameters are in place for four different classifications of waterspout: tornadic, upper low, land breeze, and winter.

The tornadic variety is self-explanatory, and any storm chaser with some experience making his or her own forecasts should have a good feel for when that kind of waterspout is likely. Mike favors the 500 mb cold-core, closed low setup, which to my thinking may be a variant of the first in producing low-top supercells. The remaining two, land breeze and winter, seem to involve different dynamics. For all the waterspout categories, one of the constraints is that for spouts to occur, winds at 850 mbs have to be less than 40 knots, something I find particularly interesting in the case of supercell-based waterspouts.

In any event, I’m hoping that this year is my year to finally witness a spout or two. Michigan chasers and weather weenies, it’s time to pay attention to the marine forecasts. The “second season” can include action right along the lakeshore even when nothing’s popping anywhere else. Make sure you bring your shotgun just in case a waterspout gets too close for comfort (written with a wink and a grin).

While doing a bit of Googling on waterspouts, I came across an article in eHow that made me do a double-take, titled “How to Break a Waterspout with a Gunshot.”

My first response was to wonder whether the writer was referring to an old marine practice that I dimly remember reading about of trying to dissolve waterspouts with cannon fire. But no, the writer doesn’t require that you use a cannon. All you need is a gun, he assures you, preferably one with “the blast strength of a shotgun or better.”

Here’s a link to the article. And since it’s a short piece and I’m leery of broken links, I’m going to also quote it here for you in its entirety.

Instructions

• Step 1: Assess the strength of the waterspout. Waterspouts are dangerous and require extreme caution, especially if you are going to approach one. You need to assess if getting close to the waterspout is feasible and safe. One good way of assessing the strength of a waterspout is to look at the clouds above it. Regular cumulus parent clouds usually produce weak waterspouts, while supercells produce stronger variants.

• Step 2: Approach the waterspout. For the sake of breaking the waterspout with a gunshot, the closer you get to the waterspout the better. For the sake of your safety though, distance is preferable. This means that you need to get as close as you can get to the waterspout without jeopardizing your safety or the safety of your vessel and crew.

• Step 3: Ready your weapon. A gun with the blast strength of a shotgun or better is required to break the waterspout. Most cases of successful use of a gunshot to break a waterspout occurred with a shotgun. So if you have a shotgun on board load it and get ready to fire.

• Step 4: Fire multiple times. The more times you hit the waterspout the better your chances of breaking it. Your goal is to disturb the atmospheric dynamic that causes and sustains the waterspout with the force of the shotgun blasts. So, the more chaos you add to the waterspout the greater the chances that you can disturb the equilibrium of forces that produce the weather phenomenon.

Hmmm…sounds reasonable. Anyone care to give it a try? Let me know–I’ll lend you my 12 gauge. On second thought, no I won’t. Chances are that’s the last I’d see of it.

I wonder where this person has gotten his or her information, and what actual research–versus anecdotal evidence and pure speculation–is available to back it up? Even the weakest waterspout involves vast scales of motion that extend upward for thousands of feet and aren’t likely to be be impressed by twinky little shotgun pellets passing through them. I’ve seen a video of an airplane flying through a fair-weather waterspout, and the spout didn’t so much as hiccup.

I’m ready to be proved wrong, but I have a hunch that any purported waterspout thwartings by gunshot stem from encounters where the spouts were already at the point of dissolution. Waterspouts aren’t known for their longevity; still, a spout is going to break up when it’s darned good and ready to. Until then, peppering away at it with  “a gun with the blast strength of a shotgun or better” (precisely what “or better” means is unclear to me, but I doubt it matters) isn’t going to make much difference.

I’m no expert on waterspouts, but I do have an opinion on them, namely, that waterspouts are  something to enjoy from a distance, avoid when boating, and respect as a phenomenon over which we have little control.

As for breaking one with a gunshot, gee, why not? But first, let’s you and me go on a snipe hunt. Now, you just stand over there in that swamp, hold this burlap bag open, and call, “Here, snipe-snipe-sniiiiipe!” while I circle around through the woods…

The marine forecast for Saturday remarked on the possibility of waterspouts on Lake Michigan. Kurt Hulst and I headed to the lakeshore in the hopes of seeing a few spouts, but we wound up disappointed.

We initially targeted Holland, but once we arrived, it became clear that our best shot would be farther north where at least some convection was showing on the radar. So we headed up Lakeshore Drive to Grand Haven and parked in the state park.

In a word, we got skunked. Decent vertical development didn’t begin to show up until it was time to leave, around 4:00 p.m. Kurt needed to be home by 5:00 for a dinner date with his grandmother, so there was no question of sticking around. That was unfortunate, as some formidable-looking cloud bands were finally starting to roll in, and I’m left to wonder whether there were in fact any reports of waterspouts later in the afternoon. As for Kurt and me, we didn’t see a thing, other than some very impressive surf rolling in on a stiff northwest wind.

I’ve never seen a waterspout, and neither has Kurt. Today did nothing to change our unbroken record. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

So there I was, driving down I-96 toward my mother and sister’s house in Grand Rapids this afternoon, when I saw what at first glance looked like a wall cloud. It looked like one at second glance, too, and third, hanging off of a cumulus tower in the distance.

Severe weather wasn’t in the outlook today, and in fact, the afternoon was coolish and not particularly moist, with spotty showers but no thunder or lightning. I was unaware of any reason to be on the lookout for abnormal weather, though the extent of the vertical development in the cumulus clouds coupled with their nicely sheared look would have been a tip-off under more propitious circumstances.

Anyway, I was intrigued by the cloud formation, but not quite prepared to call it anything more than a lowering at that point. It was falling apart over Grand Rapids by the time I turned north onto the East Beltline. But the show was far from over. Another large towering cumulus several miles to my northwest was exhibiting an even larger, blocky lowering which wasn’t showing any signs of dissipating.

That did it. It was time to get close enough to this thing to see just exactly what it was. This was a simple matter. The cloud was drifting quite slowly, and intercepting it involved nothing more elaborate than continuing north up the Beltline past 7 Mile Road, then pulling into a small turn-in, where I had an unobstructed view from maybe half a mile away.

The cloud was indeed a wall cloud. I could see a weak updraft dragging scud up into it, and even a hint of an RFD. More important, the cloud was circulating–very slowly, to be sure, but unmistakably. As it moved closer, I even observed a small, anticyclonic vortex spinning almost directly overhead. There was obviously enough shear and helicity in the atmosphere to create some interest, and I had a nice front-row seat. Just wish I’d had my camera with me, but as I said, I wasn’t expecting anything weatherwise today that would have made me think to grab it.

What I was seeing struck me as more fascinating than threatening, but I decided to call KGRR and report it anyway, just for the record. The met who took my information said he wasn’t surprised. He told me that the office had already received several reports of waterspouts out on Lake Michigan, plus other reports of funnel clouds. Sounded like a cold air funnel outbreak.

My buddy Kurt Hulst called later to tell me that he, too, had seen a wall cloud over Caledonia from where he lives in Kentwood. If I’d been home, it would have been a front door delivery, but of course I wasn’t. Seems to me, though, that Kurt said he got some photos. I hope so, because I’d like to see what I missed.

Days like today just go to show that the weather does what it wants, when it wants. Maybe the local WFO will offer an analysis of today’s conditions. That would be cool.

Lesson learned: take my camera with me wherever I go.