Watch: Rare waterspout sighted off the shores of Seattle over Puget Sound

SEATTLE — Well that’s something you don’t see every day… or every decade…

A waterspout touched down in the waters of Puget Sound about 3 miles off Seattle’s Magnolia neighborhood as a strong thunderstorm moved through Tuesday afternoon.

The National Weather Service says it occurred just after 3 p.m. and didn’t last very long. No damage was reported.

Video from several photographers have been posted across social media channels.

“We went to go chase the incoming lightning in Magnolia. When we drove down to the lighthouse it began to hail heavily, pea-plus size then a few dime size,” said Alexander Pluver. “Looking off to the west, there was a strong wall line traveling towards us across the Sound. A few walls of rain and hail and very dark heavy rain directly west, but to the south was still pretty light and could get a better view of what was coming down.”

He said he could see there was upper rotation in a tubular shape but nothing was making it to the water.

“Then my wife saw the bottom 2/3 in a tail that seemed to be meeting the water connected to the funnel above. It went on and off for about 15 minutes. Forming and ebbing. Probably a mile and a half out to the southwest from our view. From our vantage it may have been consistently hitting the water but hard to tell through the rain and hail curtains.”

A waterspout is simply a tornado that occurs over water. Both are exceedingly rare in the Seattle and Puget Sound area.

The last confirmed waterspout that I can remember was one that actually triggered a Tornado Warning in Pierce County in 2014.

(Video courtesy: Conner Helms)

There was also the EF-2 tornado that touched down in Port Orchard in December 2018.

Washington does average about 3 tornados (or waterspouts; they count) across the entire state. For as rare as they are, April is what passes for “tornado season” in the Northwest as cool, unstable air lingering from the winter chills mix with warmer air from the longer days and approaching warmth make a volatile mix.

While most tornadoes in the Northwest are very weak and rate as an EF-0 or EF-1 on the Enhanced Fujita scale, there have been a few exceptions.

(Video courtesy: Alexander Pulver)

Most notable was the EF-3 tornado that tore through Vancouver, Washington on April 5, 1972 that left 6 dead and 300 injured. That is the only deadly tornado recorded in Pacific Northwest history.

MORE: “I have to get the baby”: A Vancouver mother’s sacrifice during the Northwest’s deadliest tornado

Another EF-3 tornado touched down in Kent in 1969 that left one person injured.

Yet another tornado in 1962 could have altered the history of the Seattle as a twister with 100 mph swept through Seattle’s View Ridge neighborhood — including causing damage to the carport outside the childhood home of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who was home at the time, according to HistoryLink.

Pluver said they later were in upper Magnolia chasing the lightning and had the most intense hail he said he had ever seen in Seattle.

(Video courtesy: Alexander Pulver) 

“It was such a wonderful wild spring storm,” he said. “So fun.”