QUITE A SIGHT
Water spouts, funnel clouds create a stir at the city waterfrontBy MICHAEL RUKAVINA
Article Photos
No offense to the Chautauqua County Fair, but in this matchup, Mother Nature showed everyone how she can steal the show in a matter of minutes.
She probably would have charged a lot more than fair admission as well, for the show she put on.
Boats poured back into Dunkirk harbor soon after 11 o'clock Wednesday morning after one water spout on Lake Erie quickly turned into two, eventually totaling four in all.
"I heard the weather forecast, and someone said there was a water spout west of the harbor, and we were about three miles straight out north and we saw them. There was a big mother coming in toward the shore so we got the heck out of there," said Frank Dollard, of Cassadaga, who was on the lake at the time and managed to catch one walleye before safely exiting. "I've seen them, but never that big. Those were the biggest ones I've ever seen and I've been boating for 50 years."
One of the four water spouts, and the last to dissipate, was reported to have struck land near Point Gratiot and actually took down a few trees.
"We saw it get bigger and bigger and we saw it hit land. It knocked out a tree (about two feet in diameter) at the Point, around that bend on the way to the softball field," said Kristin Carmona and Judi Lutz-Woods of Fredonia. "We went out to look at the first one, and then we looked up and saw the second forming over about a five-minute period. You could actually see the water being sucked up and going round and round toward the land. You could feel the water, thinking it was raining, but it was the water being sucked up and dropping down on us."
According to the Chautauqua County Sheriffs Navigation Division, there were at least 20 boaters out on the lake at the time, all of whom returned to shore safely.
"We heard on the radio there was some water spouts sighted. We went out to take a look and to make sure no boats were in harm's way," said Tom Block, deputy with the Sheriffs Marine Unit.
"As we exited the Dunkirk harbor we saw the spouts approaching Dunkirk and we did our best to monitor everyone as they came in to make sure no one was in its path."
"There were some boats out there ... we could have sworn it was on top of them, but they were trying to get in," added Gerry Giambrone, Deputy with the Sheriffs Marine Unit. "I bet it was kicking water around as big as this area around the boardwalk. It was mammoth."
Block said their boat was about a half-mile away from the water spout which twisted around what looked to be near the power plant shoreline.
On shore, boaters docked and grabbed what ever camera they could find to capture an image of Mother Nature's fury.
"We were fishing real close to where the first one came down ... I saw the spouts begin to peak and I knew it was time to get out of there," said boater Dan Nugent of Wyoming County. "I wasn't exactly going the posted 5 mph speed limit coming into the dock, but I don't think the Sheriff's Department minded; they were making sure everyone came in safely."
Those who could also prepared for the worst as the last water spout approached land.
"We have a protocol here so if we recognize a hazard we have a Doctor Windy Drill, we call it, so we announced the sighting of it and had residents go into the central corridor away from windows," said Chautauqua County Home Administrator Timothy Hellwig. "It was out over the lake, probably about two miles from us. It was sizable ... probably the biggest water spout I've ever seen out there."
A waterspout is an intense columnar vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water and is connected to a cumuliform cloud. In the common form, it is a nonsupercell tornado over water, and brings the water upward. Also, it is weaker than most of its land counterparts.
