Spotted a waterspout this summer? What you should know about SC’s tornadoes of the sea

Chad Harmon was shark fishing on Harbor Island Tuesday morning when he turned around and saw something unexpected: It looked like a tornado on the water.

What Harmon saw was a waterspout, a funnel of air that twists from clouds to the water.

“It was really cool, a once in a lifetime experience,” Harmon said, who was visiting South Carolina from Ohio.

Harmon snapped some photos of the waterspout, which showed up around 7 or 8 a.m., and uploaded them to Facebook: “This water spout was gettin’ it today!” he wrote.

Waterspouts are common in South Carolina in the summertime. The waterspout Harmon saw was the ninth recorded off South Carolina’s cost since June 1, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Peter Mohlin.

That number includes a waterspout in Myrtle Beach that made landfall and turned into a tornado, as reported by the Sun News.

The incident in Myrtle Beach did not cause any injuries. But waterspouts rarely cause harm, Mohlin said.

That’s because they usually occur offshore. The majority of waterspouts are also non-tornadic and last a short amount of time, Mohlin said.

Although waterspouts appear from June to early September, waterspout season typically peaks around this time of year, said Emily McGraw, an NWS meteorologist in Charleston.

During July, “the waters are warmer, and the winds over the water are a little bit lighter,” McGraw said.

Summer can bring anywhere from three to 25 waterspouts each year, Mohlin said.

This story was originally published July 25, 2018 at 3:18 PM.