Re: [Phys-l] Entrainment of oil in Hurricane?

[Bernard Cleyet <bernardcleyet@redshift.com>]

My memory often doesn't serve, so it's just my imagination of reports of vessels sinking from stopped waterspouts' water falling on them?



Waterspouts, likely those of the tornadic variety, have been known to occasionally suck up live fish and frogs and then drop them over nearby land. In Montreal, a waterspout once rained lizards on the city. They have also showered tadpoles on New York and toads on France. A waterspout which struck Providence, Rhode Island, rained fish down on the populus who promptly gathered and sold them, a heaven-sent windfall for sure!

http://www.islandnet.com/~see/weather/almanac/arc2002/alm02oct.htm


extensive believable (NOAA research) Tornado data:

http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/mwr/089/mwr-089-12-0533.pdf


Very lightly skimmed -- p diff. ~   60 mb  "out of"   1000 mb  or 6%.     6%  of 14.7 is 0.88 #/in^2   v. ~ 1/2 #/in^2 per foot head of water yields 1.7 feet of water the tornado can support.   If the tornado is 50 feet in D,  then that's about 15 k cubic feet or v.~ 400 tonnes.  So if my assumptions are reasonable and I've made no serious arithmetik error, it could easily sink a small boat, no?    This assumes it survived the high winds first!

bc did very hurriedly, leaves it for others to critique.

p.s.  obviously Bob L.  is correct. [I also found such in googling.]  A perfect tornado (note: true water spouts are nothing compared to tornados over water) would support only about 34 feet of water as Torricelli found.  (earlier others more properly:  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometer    )


LaMontagne, Bob wrote:
> The high winds of a water spout (tornado) would certainly cause rough waves that would inject droplets into the air rushing into the low pressure core. However, there is not a major transport of water upwards in a water spout. The visual surface of the water spout is not like water rushing up a straw. It is where the air outside the column flows into the low pressure region around the core and cools to the condensation point - giving the appearence of a solid column of water. The air above the water is probably pretty humid before it enters the column of rotating air.
>
> Bob at PC
> _______





On 2010, Jun 25, , at 04:45, Brian Whatcott wrote:

> I notice that movies of ground-bound tornadoes seem to show 18 wheelers, 
> cows,
> barns and trucks flying up and away.
> Is the visual surface of the tornado really dissimilar to  solids 
> rushing up a straw?
> Possibly so.
>
> Brian W