This paper describes a field program conducted by NOAA and the National Geographic Society in late August 1993 near Key West, Florida. The mission of the expedition was to obtain close-up photographic documentation of waterspouts. Using a NOAA helicopter as an observing platform, the participants dropped flares onto the sea surface to visualize the airflow and filmed waterspouts using a state-of-the art motion picture camera and still cameras. Over a dozen waterspouts/funnel clouds were observed, and the most detailed movies of spray vortices ever taken were obtained.
*National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S. Weather Research Program Office, Silver Spring, Maryland.
+School of Meteorology, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma
