Massive Waterspouts Form Off Australia Coast (VIDEO)

Four massive waterspouts -- tornadoes formed over water -- were captured on film off Australian's coast on Monday.

According to CBS News, the rare phenomena were spotted off the New South Wales coast as extreme weather hammered down on other parts of the region. The aerial videos seen below were filmed from a helicopter by Australia's Channel 7, which claimed that they reached heights of nearly 2,000 feet.

From the Daily Mail:

The amazing natural phenomena caused a huge stir with locals, some of whom had lived in the area for over 50 years and never seen one.

Almost a month ago, a rare occurrence of twin waterspouts was caught on video off Hawaii's coast.

WATCH:

Comments

[Riddley Walker]

05:05 AM on 06/09/2011

This is a new phenomenon. Be interesting if they become commonplace.

[verylargehat]

01:14 PM on 06/01/2011

Amazing footage!

2011 seems to be the year of the twister.

[Theusernamejoe Was Taken]

01:01 PM on 06/01/2011

This must be "rare" like they say double-rainbows are "rare"... in some areas, maybe. (re: Double Rainbow "rarity" :http://preview.tinyurl.com/myownrainbowx2 ) I went to Florida (Hobe Sound) when I was 14 and over the two week span I saw several of these daily, way out on the horizon, sometimes two at a time, and one time, like the one in the video. That was a kinda-funny story. I guess in that two week span I became an expert on early water-spout warning: As I was coasting down the shore line on the beach, I looked up and saw not far off the shore a scraggly pointy tiny puny tendril peeking out from a cloud bank. I walked toward the middle aged life guard (Floridian, by the way) and asked him if that was a funnel cloud, to which he told me "Nah, you'd know it if it was". Of course, you know where this is going: I walked up the beach and re-entered the ocean to take another trip down the shore line, and as I laid back on the raft and kept looking at it, I became more convinced it *must* be a funnel cloud because it maintained that tiny scraggly over-all shape even though it moved around a bit. So just as the tide rolled me back into shore near the life guard about 10 minutes later,,, (continued)

[Theusernamejoe Was Taken]

01:02 PM on 06/01/2011

(continued from above) ...,I decided I was going to approach and ask again, based on my observations that it maintained it's over all form for so long. Well, as I walked up to him, in the span of about 5 seconds, the puny tiny tendril took specific form and was now a barely-noticeable puny tiny yet SMOOTH point sticking out of the cloud base. I tapped him on the shoulder and JUST as he looked at me and I was looking past him and pointing in the sky where he had JUST been facing, it began to stretch to the sea floor and getting wider at it's top, dropping gracefully just in the span of time that I had asked "Are you sure that isn't a funnel cloud?". he turns around to see a FULLY FORMED white majestic funnel cloud descending gracefully in front of him. I was polite about it (really, I was one of those good kids.. really.. I was) but it was pretty funny to see him turn back around to see a fully formed funnel cloud already 3/4ths to the sea floor when a moment before I tapped him on his shoulder, it wasn't there. Like in the movies when someone turns their head from one side to another, pauses for a second, then turns back to find someone standing right next to them staring at them from point-blank range. It was like that. :)

[Yarrr]

12:07 PM on 06/01/2011

Cool.

[the avenging angel]

12:12 AM on 06/01/2011

Pretty wild looking sucker.

[TheSarge]

07:57 PM on 05/31/2011

Ive never seen this phenomenon beside videos, it looks beautiful wrapped in a shroud of prisms.

[rccthatsme]

05:09 PM on 05/31/2011

Ever see the Bolt report? This Aussie based news commentary program is all over the AGW scandal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9voS5MJSuM

[Chazzam]

01:17 PM on 06/01/2011

Fake outrage/scandal.

[rccthatsme]

03:10 AM on 06/10/2011

you are suing sentence fragments in your reply. Take a deep breath and use complete thoughts to present your radical, unsupported claims.

[Riddley Walker]

05:03 AM on 06/09/2011

I can tell you that Andrew Bolt is a populist journalist who writes for the Murdoch Press. His shows are full of misrepresentations and disinformation.

[rccthatsme]

03:22 AM on 06/10/2011

How do you discredit the site below?

http://climaterealists.com/index.php

We may as well go through them all. The IPCC has already had climategate, their leader has been uncovered as a railway engineer with no background in climate, who stands to make billions in a carbon regulated environment. Gore is a proven liar, moron and hypocrite and since the globe is now cooling the ice packs restoring and we see that the medieval warming was left out of the trends (along with the data skewing) it is clear BOTH sides are using hyperbole and one conjured up data.

With this much nonsene, we may as well turn to George Carlin for sage advise.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw

[Andrew Harvey]

02:06 PM on 05/31/2011

the AGW view: A strong correlation between carbon emissions and the presence of water spouts has been observed. Global warming must be to blame for these water spouts, as no one has seen one in fifty years.

Did anyone notice the correlation between the existence of helicopter news teams and the spotting of water spouts?

[Billybladerunner]

12:25 PM on 05/31/2011

White house press release:

Republicans are to blame for these, George Bush's fault these water spouts happened.. They only stopped because President Obama got invoved....

[AlabamaProgress]

12:29 PM on 05/31/2011

?? Gotta love the random trolling. Did you come up with that all by yourself?

[DSOTM]

12:43 PM on 05/31/2011

Billy, your mommy just laid out your clothing for the day, now go get dressed and find a job.

[Vote2bfree]

01:31 PM on 05/31/2011

I think this is his job.

[Huskey Michael]

12:14 PM on 05/31/2011

wild to look at

[trucker1000]

11:32 AM on 05/31/2011

of course this is in the green part of Huff

"the rare phenomena were spotted off the New South Wales coast as extreme weather hammered down on other parts of the region"

Notice they say extreme weather when they are reporting a complete normal thing, water spouts are nothing new and no increasing in number

[Huskey Michael]

12:20 PM on 05/31/2011

Doesn't make sense to keep polluting and act like no consequence is occuring. Why take a chance? Better to be safe and say at least we took steps for the sake of our world, than to have an out of control warming on our hands with its devastating effects and the blame being on us after we said manmade global climate change is a lie. Cause that is what is gonna happen. Then people that moaned and groaned about Al Gore's documentary is gonna looks idiots. And let me tell ya, it's not gonna be ice cream and cake for those people.

[rccthatsme]

05:06 PM on 05/31/2011

When calling others names, it is best to assure your grammar is correct. Mind you, I am not calling you an idiot, but your grammar may have some leaning in that direction.

[LeFlaneur]

01:33 PM on 05/31/2011

all weather stories are in the green part of Huff, or have you failed to notice.

[ekg]

11:29 AM on 05/31/2011

Waterspouts happen frequently in the open ocean. Also, they are much, much weaker than a tornado, so there really is no comparison here.
They are very beautiful, though.......except for that time one came over my boat 30 miles offshore

[digitalpug]

11:24 AM on 05/31/2011

Have you noticed how every weather event, no matter how mundane, is labeled "massive"?

[pending]

11:07 AM on 05/31/2011

Its here you can actually see the amazing natural phenomenon that tornadoes are. Its a shame something so beautiful can be so devastating. Condolences to Joplin.

[Pierre99]

10:57 AM on 05/31/2011

Obama promises a billion in waterspout aid from the bankrupt U S of A.