A Waterspout off of Southern Orange
County California
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A brilliant day after a storm produced
a group of small waterspouts that failed to reach the water, |
3:25pm - I first saw one of the small funnel clouds when I opened my front door to go get the mail. It was dripping down from a long, flat-bottomed cloud that was drifting rapidly south in the 20kt. wind. |
3:55pm - Jumping in the car, I drove south to catch it at Dana Point (See panorama above). Although there were four small funnel clouds showing, they were so small, they are nearly invisible in the photograph. So I continued on South, stopping by the side of the road to get this shot at Doheny Beach |
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4:15pm - A closer look from the roadside stop at Doheny Beach. |
4:30pm - A bit further on, in north San Clemente, I stopped and got this close-up of the critter. |
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5:00pm - Fighting the road construction and gawking traffic through San Clemente, I could see that I would not be able to get underneath the funnel as it passed over land, so in desperation, I pointed the camera through the windshield while driving and took this picture "in the blind". Not bad... There were times when the funnel nearly touched the water, but I was always driving at that moment. By the time I'd get stopped in a place for a good photo, the funnel would be receding back up into the cloud base. This is the longest shot of it I have, |
5:15pm - A final shot taken nearly straight up at the funnel from the far southern end of San Clemente as the weather system moved over the land and passed into the Camp Pendleton Marine Base. |
For nearly 40 years, I have watched literally hundreds of these magnificent waterspouts form off of Three Arch Bay here in Southern California, and nearly every time my camera is either somewhere else or out of film. One time in the early 1970's I spotted a storm cloud that had seven huge waterspouts snaking down to the ocean all at once...but no camera with me! But having learned to recognize the cloud and wind conditions that spawn them, on this day I was ready. Sure enough, soon a very large and well formed spout began to spiral down out of the clouds (see above). Notice the large cargo ship near the funnel. What a sight it must have been for them!
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A month or so later, another storm system
rolled down the coast and again produced this distant
wonder.
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In 1986, another miracle of nature arrived. I remember some of my surfer friends who were in the water at the time, telling me that this 'spout lasted a long time, maybe 15 minutes, and reached all the way to the oceans surface, with a great deal of seawater mist being churned up into the air. By the time I spotted it and ran home for the camera then ran back to the cliff edge, it had disappeared back up into the clouds. I waited around hoping it would return, and after 10 minutes this wondrous phenomena reappeared, and lasted for another 10 minutes or so. It never got much bigger then this while the camera was in my hands. It always seems to work that way. "Man, you should'a been here ten minutes ago! It was AWESOME!" ...uh, yeah...
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