Abstract
ON Saturday last, April 16, whilst fishing in the river Elwy at a point about two miles above the well-known Cefa caves, and five from St. Asaph by the river, I witnessed a very singular phenomenon. My attention was suddenly called up-stream by a remarkably strange hissing, bubbling sound, such as might be produced by plunging a mass of heated metal into water. On turning I beheld what I may call a diminutive waterspout in the centre of the stream, some forty paces from where I was standing. Its base, as well as I could observe, was a little more than two feet in diameter. The water curled up from the river in an unbroken cylindrical form to a height of about fifteen inches, rotating rapidly, then diverged as from a number of jets, being thrown off with considerable force to an additional elevation of six or seven feet, the spray falling all round as from an elaborately arranged fountain, covering a large area. It remained apparently in the same position for about forty seconds, then moved slowly in the direction of the right bank of the river, and was again drawn towards the centre, where it remained stationary as before for a few seconds. Again it moved in the former direction, gradually diminishing and losing force as it neared the bank, and finally collapsed in the shallow water. Strange to say, its course was perpendicular to the bank and not with the current.
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GRAY, J. A Waterspout. Nature 5, 501 (1872). https://doi.org/10.1038/005501b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/005501b0
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