Bureau of Meteorology 2025 calendar: what’s going on in this image?
Look closely at this image of a colossal waterspout off Darwin and you’ll see a nearby boat – presumably being driven very fast in the opposite direction...
Imagine being out at sea and seeing one of these things bearing down on you. The terror of it: you’d think of the tornado that sank that tech billionaire’s yacht in Sicily in August, killing seven poor souls. But it turns out there are two types of waterspout, the “tornadic” and the “fair weather” varieties. The first is very violent, while the second is generally more chilled. And this image, from the Bureau of Meteorology’s 2025 calendar, is a “fair weather” one. They form when two winds travelling in opposite directions over the water’s surface collide, a BoM meteorologist explains. “They crash together and there’s nowhere to go except up – and as the air rises it starts to rotate.” Fun fact: contrary to what most of us think, water isn’t being sucked up off the ocean’s surface. “The spinning column draws in water vapour from the air around it, which suddenly condenses,” the BoM lady says. So what we’re looking at here is actually a spinning column of mist.
Cathryn Vasseleu, a documentary filmmaker from Sydney, was sitting on the balcony of her waterfront place in Darwin when her partner, gazing out over Beagle Gulf, noticed “this odd vertical line on the horizon,” she says. “We couldn’t work out what it was. So I grabbed my binoculars – and when I realised it was a waterspout I got my camera and my long lens. I’m a birder and a bird photographer, so I’ve always got them close by.” It lasted only a few minutes, says Vasseleu, whose latest film Tiger on the Rocks (now on SBS On Demand) tells the deep history of the thylacine.
Incidentally, look very closely at this image and you’ll see a boat, very close to the waterspout, far out to sea. Imagine how the skipper would have frantically gunned the vessel as that demonic-looking, spinning vortex reared up nearby. You want to yell at him, Oi, MATE! It’s the fair weather type, you’re all good!! But of course you can’t. “Who knows what they were thinking in that moment!” says Vasseleu.
The BoM 2025 calendar is out now, $22.https://shop.bom.gov.au/