Boat Intercepts Tornado in Florida Keys?

UPDATE: Some more information from Bruce: This reading was from a mast-top anemometer on the boat and winds built from 40 to 55 to 75 to 90 to 101.7 knots during the severe thunderstorm.

While Reed Timmer purposely drove his car into a tornado or two on Discovery's "Storm Chasers" this past summer, Bruce in Florida may have accidentally rode one out on his boat, and he's (also) got the weather data to prove it.

Blog reader Bruce says:

Here's a radar shot from AccuWeather.com MapSpace™ (PREMIUM | PRO) just before they measured the wind - a strong thunderstorm was approaching the area:

There's even a possible hook echo there and the velocity data from AccuWeather.com RadarPlus (see below) backs that up -- significant rotation started in the storm just before it made landfall (if you draw the wind field based on blue [away from the radar] and red [towards the radar] you see clockwise circulation indicating a Mesocyclone). The radar's (admittedly unreliable) rotation algorithms alternately indicated 2-D and 3-D shear, precursors to a Mesocyclone.

If it was indeed a waterspout that Bruce encountered, it wasn't the first this week; AccuWeather.com Facebook Fan Jimmy D. also uploaded this photo of a waterspout at Delray Beach, Florida Tuesday. Here's a map of the local storm reports from the NWS in Key West.

The local weather coastal weather station in Marathon VCAF1 showed the wind spike (to 44 mph), quick wind shift and pressure fall as the storm passed over:

Note that, although the highest wind gust the NWS measured in the area was only 49 mph, the fact that large trees were downed indicates to me that winds were higher in localized areas, and coupled with the radar data above, I think it's likely this was a waterspout that came onshore (changing names to a tornado).

So what we may have here the first weather data from a boat inside a tornado!(It's also possible Bruce measured a high straight-line wind gust from the storm, or that his anemometer malfunctioned, and we will probably never know for sure, but I find the boat-in-a-tornado scenario entirely plausible. I'm talking further with Bruce about whether he was able to measure a pressure dip as well, and whether or not he has archived data from the weather station. I'll post more information here as it becomes available.)

At this time, there are no mentions of waterspouts in Marathon yesterday from the media or the NWS. Select portions of the state, especially the keys, have been plagued with heavy rain and thunderstorms since yesterday -- check out this flooding video from Sarasota in the west-central part of the state.