RANKIN COUNTY, MS (Mississippi News Now) -
A large waterspout that could be seen for miles away formed over the Ross Barnett Reservoir Sunday evening around 6:45 p.m.
The waterspout was over the upper part of the main lake and according to reservoir manager John Sigman, did not move very much. Sigman lives in Madison County, just west of the reservoir.
"I was in the yard and I looked up and there it was. It was simply huge and it was astounding in that it was perfectly motionless," said Sigman. "And there was no noise. It looked like a giant soda straw, stuck down into the lake."
One of the lessons of the waterspout is that many people now have smartphones with cameras on them and lots of people, too many to name, sent us pictures of the waterspout from various vantage points. Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey put out a statement saying that, in the future, a tornado warning will be sounded if a fair weather waterspout is sighted.
The weather service did put out a tornado warning as a precaution. Meteorologist Steve Wilkinson of the Jackson office of the National Weather Service talked with us about the waterspout.
"It's a pretty rare event to see something like that on an inland body of water, like the reservoir. Usually we see those down by the coast," said Wilkinson. "A waterspout, is sort of a type of tornado. It's not the same type you would get in the spring, in a big tornado event, but it is a type of tornado, a weaker type, and were it to move ashore, or hit a boat out on the reservoir, it would certainly cause damage."
Reservoir manager John Sigman estimates the waterspout was about a third of the way down between Highway 43 and the dam, or about eight miles up the lake from the dam.
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