Huge Water Spout on St Johns at 5 PM

[The Compound]

There was some minor damage on Stockton and Herschel near our house.  This amazing video lets you look inside the water spout (twister).
http://www.news4jax.com/video/19890325/

That video was just posted above by Lunican

[reednavy]

Everyone is talking about the lack of significant weather before this waterspout was spotted.  I had an even more bizarre experience last summer while dining in St. Augustine.  It was a clear day with just a few cumulus clouds I'd estimate 4,000 feet.  My friend said, "What is that?"  Sure enough, it was a waterspout on the ocean.

I have taken a few meteorology classes and have a commercial pilots license.  I never knew they could occur in such good conditions.  Anyone know anything more about these?

In most cases this time of year, all you need is relatively light to calm winds in the overall area to start. A tower cumulus, jsut producing a shower can spawn a waterspout, as is very common in SoFal, especially in The Keys. Just a light amount of windshear, about 10kts or more in a localized location can give birth to a waterspout, commonly called Fair Weather Spouts. They are typical and rarely form from thunderstorms. In this case, to opposing sea breeze fronts provided enough windshear across a localized are and produced this spout. Granted, the rotation did finally interact with the rapidly developing storm and added a little kick to it and was able to move ashore for several blocks.

[blizz01]

Was in the Latest News section on CNN.com Saturday:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/ireports/2009/06/26/ireport.fl.waterspout.ireport?iref=videosearch

[blizz01]

CNN's regurgitating the story on the "Latest News" again today - haha.  Maybe they should focus more on Iran or North Korea.

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2009/06/30/irpt.waterspout.tornado.cnn