MAELSTROM AT SEA

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 4324, 27 July 1937, Page 2

MAELSTROM AT SEA

MENAGE OF WATERSPOUTS Waterspouts are still regarded as one of the mysteries and hazards of the sea. It will come as a surprise to many, then, to learn that waterspouts have wrought more known damage by land than by sea (says the Melbourne ‘ Argus ’). Australians will not be prepared, either, for the fact that more waterspouts have been recorded from the south-eastern corner of the Australian coast than from any other single locality in the world. When the amphibian aeroplane Cutty Sark encountered a waterspout on the flight from Bateman’s Bay to Mascot (N.S.W.) recently it was flying not far north of a region notorious for such phenomena. Off Eden, a little north of the Victorian border, 20 were seen within five hours in an exceptional visitation about 40 years ago. All were like pillars of water, moving over the surface of the ocean and extending up for hundreds or thousands of feet into the clouds.

The Cutty Sark pilot’s description of the vortex descending from the clouds into the sea accords with scientific observation, although it is astray from the popular conception of a pillar of ocean water sucked up into the heavens. Sailors who have had the misfortune to pass through one—and the good fortune to survive to tell the tale—have reported that the water shipped was fresh or only slighly brackish. They have told, also, terrifying stories of the deafening roar of the waterspout as it descended upon them and of the tornado force' with which it wrested the top-hamper from their ships. All these things are explicable, for most waterspouts are really marine tornadoes. They occur when a sharp local disturbance sets the air in violent motion, and the sudden whirling—the result of two cross-currents meeting—sucks down and condenses the moisture from the clouds. At the same time the vortex may suck up water from the sea for a limited distance, and the two columns, one of fresh water from above and the other of salt water from below, have been observed to approach and join. A blast of cold air from above striking the warmer surface of the sea may be sufficient to set the spout off on its mad whirl. DEVASTATION ON LAND.

The most favourable conditions for the formation of a Avaterspout occur Avhere colds Avinds from the polar regions may replace suddenly a Avarm breath from the tropics. To those who are acquainted with the AA'eather conditions in South-eastern Australia this provides an immediate clue to the frequency of Avaterspouts off Eden. Recently the regular procession of fine and stormy spells across southern Australia from Avest to east has been held up by monsoonal AA-eather forcing its Avay south. This southerly encroachment of the monsoon has brought, too, the heavy rains Avhich have fallen recently in Sydney. Momentarily, perhaps, the colder weather from the south-Avest prevailed, and the Cutty Sark’s Avaterspout Avas one result.

Once in a generation perhaps a Avaterspout bloAvs inshore. Then there is deA’astation such as SAvept Miami, the popular Avatering place in Florida (U.S.A.) in 1919, and again only a season or tAvo ago. Whole villages in Germany, in Ireland, in Hungary, and in the Southern United States have been devastated by such visitations. At Saffi, in Morocco, more than 100 persons perished Avhen a Avaterspout swept ashore early in this century; and in 1889 the villages of Chatnole, Cerne, and Miutern, in Dorsetshire, Avere grievously damaged by a similar visitation.

A waterspout usually ends, after about half an hour, by being drawn up into the sky, where it disappears as a cloud. When the whirling motion in the cloud ceases and some equilibrium is restored the whole of the water which it carries may ho dumped upon the earth again as a cloud-burst, although most so-called cloudbursts arc only heavy thunderstorms, and have no such strange origin. In a true cloudburst the rain may be distinctly salt because of the sea water sucked up with the original fresh water of the spout.

MISSING SHIPS. The willy-willies of the West Australian sand plains, the sand pillars of the desert, and even, in miniature, the swirls of dust created when two currents of wind meet at a street corner, are all akin to waterspouts. It is over the sea, though, that these things reach their most gigantic proportions. One waterspout measured from the shore with a theodolite off Eden was 5.014 ft high—almost a mile from sea to cloud. The extremities were wide, but for about 4,500 ft the spout was a uniform tube of water 10ft in diameter.

Because the conditions which cause a waterspout to form arc so localised it is impossible to forecast their occurrence. A huge one may form less than a mile from a meteorological station without causing any variation in the reading of the barometer or in the direction or strength of the wind. It is fortunate, then, that they usually occur at sea and stay there. But woe betide the mariner who is unable to escape from the path of a waterspout. It may be small and capricious and merely spin the ship like a top while it wrenches away the masts and deckhouse. On the other hand, the maelstrom may swallow the ship, leaving no trace to tell the fate of the men who went to sea and never came back. How many ships posted as missing were overtaken by waterspouts? No one will over know.