I received a few emails with pictures of the “twister in kudat” and I am publishing all of them together for your viewing pleasure cuz you know lah in Sabah, things like this seldom happens.

*added - sorry forgot to mention that this incident happened on the 8th of June 2006.

More pictures follow at the end of this post. I don’t claim these pictures as mine and honestly, I don’t know who snapped them.

Anyway, to call them twister or tornadoes is not accurate, they are water spouts. Here’s a description I picked from the weather network.

A waterspout is a rapidly whirling, funnel-shaped column of vapour and water between a cloud and the earth’s surface. They look like tornadoes over water but they’re really just first cousins. Waterspouts come in a variety of sizes and strengths and arise from different mechanisms. They can start over land as true tornadoes and drift out to sea or over a lake or large river.

Much more common are the fair-weather spouts in which small whirlwinds start from the water surface. They climb skyward, but rarely extend to the cloud level. They are similar to the little dust whirls that form over dry roads and fields. Larger waterspouts may also grow down from above in a manner similar to a tornado with the circulation beginning in the cloud and working its way down to the water.

Spouts formed over water are much smaller, less destructive, live shorter lives and move more slowly than land-based tornadoes. Waterspouts have been known to pick up small fish and frogs and other water creatures and carry them inland, where they are suddenly dropped on startled residen

Okay on with the pictures!

[tags]water+spouts, kudat, borneo, weather[/tags]