Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/196

 Waterspout— the Sailor's Dread for Centuries

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���Waterspouts have always been the dread of sailing-ship captains. In the Mediterranean, where the waterspout shown above was photographed on a January afternoon, the ocean is oftentimes lashed into foam by a series of the most violent spouts. As the photograph shows, the waterspout appears as a conical mass of cloud with concave sides rising from the water surface to meet an inverted cone of cloud. The phenomenon started as a whirl- wind over the sea during the prevalence of a humid atmosphere. The rise of heated air is accompanied by inrushing wind, which literally churns up the water into waves, and the water and foam are sucked upwards. Fish and frogs have been carried inland by waterspouts. From this fact the expression "Raining bullfrogs" probably originated

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