Ben Franklin: Weather Weenie Extraordinaire

A recent thread on Stormtrack got me thinking about historic weather weenies which shared the same passion many of us have today. Instantly, Benjamin Franklin came to mind. Everybody knows about his experiments with lightning to prove his theories which led to the development of lightning rods. But, were you aware of his fascination with "spouts"?

Check out this diagram of a waterspout he made:

(click on image for larger version)

He even wrote a nice, long paper called "Water-spouts and Whirlwinds" in which he recounted chasing a dust devil on horseback and striking his whip repeatedly through it. Read it for yourself.

In my research, I came across a winter waterspout over Lake Ontario on January 26, 1994.

The thermodynamics are the same with colder air over the relatively warmer waters and what appears to be some sort of boundary...likely induced by baroclinicity where the sun appears to be shining...similar to steam devils.

Anyway, just wanted to share what I thought were some interesting tidbits.