Waimārama Beach waterspout: Rare touchdown captured on video by Hawke’s Bay woman

Holidaymakers at a Hawke’s Bay beach watched on in awe as a waterspout formed in stormy conditions off the shore in front of them.

Waimārama resident Sarah Curd said she took a video of the waterspout forming on the water between Waimārama Beach and Te Motu-o-Kura/Bare Island around 8.30am today.

Curd and her family were alerted to the waterspout by their neighbour at the beach and ran down to the beach in their pyjamas.

Curd said it was amazing how fast the spout moved across the water, heading for Waimārama township.

“Thankfully as it neared the shore it fizzled out.

“So glad Waimārama avoided any damage today.”

MetService meteorologist Mmathapelo Makgabutlane said wind directions near the surface of the water at Waimārama this morning were such that “a bit of rotation” was occurring.

“If there was kind of enough upward motion near the surface, then that could have turned into a waterspout.”

Makgabutlane said to understand waterspouts work, people needed to think of the atmosphere as three-dimensional.

“We experience the weather here on ground level, but of course it does extend all throughout the lower part of the atmosphere.

“If the wind is coming from different directions in quite close proximity, it has the potential to set up a bit of a rotation in the air, and then if there’s something to extend that rotation upwards into the atmosphere – maybe there’s like upward motion from the surface, and it moves over that rotating air – that can extend it.

“If that happens over the ocean, then we see that as a waterspout.”

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and has worked in radio and media in the UK, Germany, and New Zealand.