(WWJ) One of the wonders of the world unfolded for astonished Lake Huron onlookers last night: A massive waterspout.
This one formed on Lake Huron and was spotted by Facebook user Brian Thompson as it came ashore at Grindstone in Huron County, just east of Port Austin, yesterday morning.
Many may have confused the spout with a tornado, but they're very different.
A waterspout is an "intense columnar vortex that occurs over a body of water." They're connected to a cloud and always occur over water.
The thing they have in common is the intense, and potentially dangerous, high speed rotation.
"If a waterspout moves onshore, the National Weather Service issues a tornado warning, as some of them can cause significant damage and injuries to people. Typically, fair weather waterspouts dissipate rapidly when they make landfall, and rarely penetrate far inland," NOAA reports on its website.
