How was the Rabigh Tower formed and several facts about this phenomenon?

Arab Weather - The media team at the Arab Weather Center monitored tweeters circulating on the (X) platform a strong waterspout that formed off the coast of Rabigh on the morning of Monday, January 6, 2024. The media spokesman for the National Center of Meteorology said that it was the strongest and had touched the shore for the first time and contributed to the rise in the waves.

Experts at the Arab Weather Center indicated that the waterspout is a natural phenomenon and is not new to the climate of the Kingdom and the entire region. It is formed when cold air passes over warm water (the Red Sea in this case), forming a rotating column of air saturated with water.

The Rabigh waterspout is classified as a tornado, which is similar to a tornado and is associated with thunderstorms and is accompanied by strong winds, hail and heavy lightning. The wind speed associated with it exceeds 150 km/h, which may pose a danger to boats and fishermen. This type of waterspout is formed under the bases of low cumulonimbus clouds with dark, flat bases, in contrast to waterspouts that occur in moderate weather and are not usually accompanied by dangerous weather phenomena, and are the most frequent in our regions.

Meteorologists at the Arab Weather Center confirmed that their formation and prediction are still a mystery, despite extensive studies, perhaps due to the dynamic nature of the weather conditions necessary for their formation, such as water temperature, humidity, and wind speed and differences in the layers of the atmosphere (shear winds). Despite extensive studies and developments in numerical modeling, the difficulty of predicting the interaction between these factors at the same time makes predicting the time and place of supercells a challenge so far.

A waterspout forms this morning, Monday, in the Rabigh region of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. #Arab_Weather #Saudi_Arabia #Winter25 pic.twitter.com/zGnDu4kkNg

— Arabia Weather - Jordan (@ArabiaWeatherJO) January 6, 2025