The water tornado blamed for the sinking of British tech billionaire Mike Lynch’s luxury superyacht in Italy has been called an unusual “black swan” event, but scientists believe these types of ocean tornadoes are becoming more frequent as a result of global warming.
The cause of the sinking Bayesian The cause has not been officially determined, but based on weather conditions in Sicily, where the yacht was anchored offshore, and eyewitness accounts, experts speculate it was a waterspout (a swirling column of mist of air and water). Warm water is the main driver of waterspouts, and over the past year, the ocean has reached record high temperatures, partly due to climate change.
“If the warming continues at this rate, it’s very likely that these events will become more common, rather than rare,” said Michalis Sioutas, a meteorologist who studies waterspouts in Greece and is director of the Hellenic Meteorological Society. “It’s entirely possible that waterspouts, tornadoes and even violent storms will become more common.”
180 ft. Bayesian A sudden storm with high winds and heavy thunder broke the mast at about 4 a.m. Monday, causing the ship to sink within minutes. Fifteen people on board have been rescued, and one person has been found dead. Six people are still missing, including Mike Lynch, the British tech billionaire who was recently acquitted of fraud charges in connection with the sale of his company to Hewlett-Packard. Five bodies were recovered from the wreck on Wednesday but have not yet been identified.
Fishermen saw a water tornado near the yacht just before it sank, and they believe a nearby schooner was rocked by what captain Karsten Borner called “hurricane-force winds,” which caused the yacht to capsize. BayesianExperts say conditions were right for a water tornado to form.
This weather anomaly occurs when warm, moist air rises rapidly over the water and rotates as wind direction changes with altitude, resulting in the formation of a long, curved funnel of spray between the water and the clouds that gets smaller and smaller as it rises to altitudes of 10,000 feet.
There are two types of water tornadoes: the more mundane kind, which occurs in fair-weather conditions when it is relatively calm and sunny, often beneath billowing cumulus clouds. They are more frequent in places like the Great Lakes and the Florida Keys, where wind speeds can reach 50 miles per hour and usually dissipate before causing much damage.
And waterspouts are essentially tornadoes on water, a “different beast” altogether, according to Wade Shirazi, a former Canadian Meteorological Service forecaster and now director of the International Waterspout Research Centre. These tornado-like waterspouts can move from land to water or vice versa, and spin at speeds of more than 125 mph. They’ve been known to throw debris, destroy buildings and capsize boats.
