Tornadoes are scary. Interesting, yes.but also terrifying. The good news, though, is that as long as you’re floating above water, you’re safe, right? Sadly, that’s not true, as 22 passengers on a luxury yacht off the coast of Sicily found out on Monday morning. According to CNNA waterspout sank their cruise ship. One passenger died, eight others, including a child, were taken to hospital and six are still missing.
If you’ve seen a waterspout before, you might wonder how a waterspout could sink a 184-foot yacht, which is understandable. The most common type of waterspout are not tornadoes, dissipate quickly, and are usually only strong enough to be recorded as F0. However, there is a much more serious type of waterspout that occurs that is essentially just a classic tornado that happens to occur over water instead of land.
According to the European Severe Weather Database, the waterspout appeared on Sunday and continued into Monday morning, suggesting it was a more powerful and dangerous waterspout. Sicily also saw some severe storms on Sunday night, with Brolo, a small town outside Palermo, getting four inches of rain in just four hours. Forecasters had warned that severe storms and strong winds would be a problem, but it appears those warnings were not taken seriously by passengers on the Bayesian.
Divers have located the yacht about 160 feet below the surface, while helicopter crews continue to search for the missing passengers, according to Italian authorities. While most of the passengers are British, one of the missing is American. The Independence report that Mike Lynch, a British tech entrepreneur, not a Colorado politician, was among the missing.
The captain of a boat anchored near the Bayesian told CNN the storm was strong enough that he had to turn on his engine to avoid a collision. “We had a big gust of wind this morning and we had to turn on the engine to keep the boat on its heel. After the storm passed, we noticed that the boat behind us had disappeared.”
