Walt wrote:
Bart Senior wrote:

A Water Spout formed of LIS today. Several tried to form and
one actually touched down--about 40' tall.

Ever seen one?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterspout

I sail dinghys on a small inland lake. "Swirlies" are pretty common,
but I've only seen one where the wind was strong enough for it to be a
waterspout. It picked up a pontoon boat and flipped it upside down.
Pretty impressive.

Ok, maybe it wasn't strong enough to be a "real" waterspout, but it was
still pretty impresssive.

Yes, I've seen a few "mini waterspouts" mixed in with line squalls -
not enough to do serious damage, but enough to flip a small boat.
I've also seen a lot of what we called "wind pussies" that were
vortexes off of planes landing at the airport, conveniently located in
the middle of Boston Harbor. Enough to trigger a gybe, if you weren't
looking.