July 23, 2017
Bonanza II/Facebook
Waterspout over Delaware Bay in Fortescue, New Jersey on July 23, 2017.
During a weekend that was intermittently wet and unbearably humid, nobody in the Delaware Valley could be blamed for hanging out inside as much as possible.
For one couple in Fortescue, the Cumberland County community on the Delaware Bay, stepping outside on Sunday afternoon was worth putting up with the nasty weather.
Captain Mike and Buck Rothman were aboard the Bonanza II, the largest fishing and party boat in Fortescue, when they spotted a funnel out on the horizon. The pair filmed what was clearly a waterspout taking form over the bay.
Waterspouts often behave much like tornadoes over land and can be every bit as dangerous, according to the NOAA's National Ocean Service. There are tornadic waterspouts and fair weather waterspouts, each of which can develop out of a variety of cloud forms. The latter are less dangerous and tend to be visible only at the point when they have neared maturity.
It wasn't immediately clear whether Sunday's waterspout, captured around 4 p.m., was tornadic or fair weather.
In the event a waterspout makes landfall, it usually dissipates quickly. Those that are sustained trigger a tornado warning from the National Weather Service and can be highly destructive.
