Waterspout — The Islands To Vermilion Oh, Lake Erie

2024-06-24 · near Vermilion, The Islands To Vermilion Oh, Lake Erie

Event narrative

Waterspout photographed offshore Vermilion around 6:45 AM EDT. Location approximated based on Doppler radar data.

Wider weather episode

The Lake Erie region resided in the cool sector during the early to mid-morning of the 24th. Simultaneously, appreciable lake-induced instability resided over Lake Erie, which was warm relative to overlying air. As a surface trough axis swept southeastward across the lake during the early morning hours, isolated lake-enhanced showers and thunderstorms developed over western portions of Lake Erie. The updraft of one of the thunderstorms managed to spawn a waterspout, which occurred as the updraft ingested surface-based vertical vorticity, low-level convergence at the base of the updraft stretched the surface-based vertical vorticity to tornado-strength, and then the vertical vorticity was advected upward in the updraft. The surface-based vertical vorticity was generated by low-level horizontal wind shear along the surface trough axis.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (41.4568, -82.4500)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1198395. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.