Waterspouts are “more common than you might think” in Ireland, a leading weather expert has warned. 

Yesterday, a luxury yacht sank off the Italian coast and out of the 22 people on board, only 15 have been rescued.

The 56m British-flagged Bayesian got into trouble when a heavy storm saw the yacht come into contact with waterspouts - which look like rotating columns of air.

UCC’s Cathal Nolan described them as “very much in the same family as tornadoes”.

“They form in a similar manner - generally speaking, at the bottom of thunderstorms which have a rotation within them,” he told Moncreiff.

“What we see is this column of air extending down towards the ground; initially a funnel cloud and if it makes contact with the ground, it becomes a tornado.

“But in this case, it forms over the sea or over any waterbody at that point then it becomes a waterspout.”

Mr Nolan said waterspouts do not come up often in the context of Irish meteorology but they do happen nonetheless.

“There is a brilliant book that’s been published… which focuses on tornadoes and waterspouts in Ireland,” he said.

“They’re actually surprisingly more common than you might think.

“There was one reported just off Dún Laoghaire actually towards the end of May this year.

“So, we do get them in Ireland.”

'Whipping up some kind of a beach brolly'

Mr Nolan said they “certainly are dangerous” and warned they are “not easy to predict”.

“Sometimes they come onshore and we’ve seen videos… of them coming onshore and whipping up some kind of a beach brolly and flying them about the place.

“They’re generally not quite as intense as regular tornados; wind speeds at their highest, they typically only become around 100kmph.

“But particularly for small boats… because they’re such a small feature and the wind rotates so rapidly around them, the fact that we see change in wind direction quite rapidly, means it can rock a boat quite rapidly.

“In that case, it can lead to capsizing which we believe is what happened in the case of the super yacht off the coast of Sicily.”

The search for the Bayesian’s other seven passengers and crew remains ongoing.

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Main image: A water spout. Picture by: Alamy.com