A passenger captured a waterspout on video recently when he was on a ship trip from Yantai City in east China’s Shandong Province to Dalian City in northeast China’s Liaoning Province.
The mobile phone footage shows that a columnar vortex rose up into the clouds about five kilometers away from the ship.
An enormous amount of water splashed down to the sea surface after flying into the sky. About one minute later, the waterspout dwindled and disappeared.
Waterspouts are commonly defined as tornadoes over water, caused by a combination of cold and warm temperatures converging over the area, along with a line of storms.
They are also known as “dragon sucking water” in Chinese, as they appear as if a dragon hiding behind the cloud is drawing water from the sea.
“This is an extremely strong convection which occurs in a limited extent,” said Gao Chao, a marine meteorology instructor at the Dalian Maritime University.
Nine waterspouts over northwest China’s Qinghai Lake were spotted within 40 minutes on Oct 20, 2014.
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