Talking Points Memo has a slide show of stunning pictures of the last hours of the Deepwater Horizon oil drilling rig as it burned and sank into the Gulf of Mexico. While all nine of the pictures are fascinating, the one above captured my interest. It appears that something unusual is occurring with the smoke column, in that a narrow rotating column seems to be descending from the main smoke column, and the smoke from this object is accumulating above the ocean surface quite a distance from the fire.
Could this be a partial collapsing of the convection column, a phenomenon that occasionally occurs in the column over a wildland fire? You Fire Behavior Analysts, what do you think?
Waterspouts in the gulf are common when there are thunderstorms around.
I’m guessing the thermal cloud produced by the burning oil created the right conditions for a waterspout but pulling down down some of the black smoke.
Neat pictures but a true burning hell.