The marine weather phenomenon known as a waterspout, which is blamed for the sinking of a British technology magnate’s yacht off Sicily, may have been exacerbated by unusually warm waters in the Mediterranean, experts say.

The 56-meter-long “Bayesian”, with which Mike Lynch and his wealthy guests celebrated a court victory, disappeared into the sea off the Sicilian town of Porticello a few minutes after the tornado-like storm.

One body has been found. Lynch, his daughter and Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, are among six people missing since the disaster struck at 4 a.m. Monday.

According to witnesses, the ship, which flies the British flag, was anchored about 700 meters from the harbor with ten crew members and twelve passengers on board when the waterspout struck.

Karsten Borner, skipper of a yacht anchored nearby, spoke of a “very strong hurricane gust”. He was struggling to keep his ship stable when suddenly “we noticed that the ship behind us had gone”.

“First came the wind, then the water – it was definitely a tornado,” local fisherman Giovanni Lococco described the waterspout.

– Tornado Power –

Investigators and experts have looked closely at the weather conditions and the construction of the “Bayesian”, whose 75-metre-high mast is the highest made of aluminium in the world, according to the Charter World website.

“A waterspout is a narrow column of rotating air beneath a thunderstorm that occurs over water” and “belongs to the same weather family as tornadoes,” said Peter Inness, a meteorologist at Britain’s University of Reading, in a commentary published by the UK’s Science Media Centre.

Like tornadoes, they suck in air in a rotating motion and typically cause less damage than tornadoes over land.

“Changes in wind direction with height are also required to drive air rotation within the waterspout,” Inness said.

While many waterspouts are “fairly insignificant” and last only a few seconds, some can reach wind speeds of over 100 kilometers per hour, Inness said.

“Winds of this strength, if they hit a boat’s position, can cause damage or capsize, especially because the wind direction changes very quickly,” he said.

The Mediterranean Sea is the place with the highest probability of waterspouts in the world due to its warm water surface and susceptibility to thunderstorms in summer and autumn, he said.

According to Spain’s leading institute for marine sciences, the Mediterranean region saw its highest temperature ever recorded this year, with a daily average of 28.90 degrees Celsius (84 Fahrenheit).

According to experts, temperatures were often 30 degrees Celsius or more, about three degrees above average.

“There may have been a superposition of air and water suction with shearing winds that ultimately created something that lifted up,” says Jean-Marie Dumon, a former naval officer who now works at the French maritime industry association GICAN.

Conditions with wind speeds of 100 km/h or more could create “completely anarchic sea conditions that could lead to capsizing,” Dumon said.

The high mast could have had an “amplifier effect” that brought the yacht to the “tipping point,” he explained.

Dumon said the Bayesian was certainly designed by ship designers to withstand extreme winds and heavy seas.

“Here we have wind shear that can lead to instability.”

“The fact that the ship itself was not damaged suggests that it was laid on its side,” said the expert.

neo/ico/ju/tw/rlp