Waterspout

Non-tornadic

Waterspouts that do not come from the turning updraft of a supercell thunderstorm, are known as "non-tornadic" or "fair-weather waterspouts", and are by far the most common type.

Fair-weather waterspouts are usually form from tall cumulus clouds with dark, flat-bottoms.

Tornadic

Sometimes a regular tornado, made by a supercell, just happens to be on water. This is called a tornadic waterspout. It could have formed on water or moved there from land. Waterspouts like this can be big and cause a lot of destruction if they hit land. They occur a lot less than non-tornadic waterspouts.

Snowspout

A winter waterspout, also known as a snow devil, an icespout, an ice devil, a snonado, or a snowspout, is a very rare meteorological phenomenon in which a vortex from snow develops that looks like a waterspout. One does not know much about this rare happening and there are only six known pictures of this event so far.

There are three main things that produce a winter waterspout:

• Very cold temperatures present over a body of warm water enough to produce fog that looks like steam above the water's surface. This usually needs temperatures of -18 °C or colder if the water temperature is no warmer than 5 °C.
• Lake-effect snows in a small, enclosed or banded formation must be present and going on.
• The wind speed has to be slow, usually less than 5 knots (9.25 km/h).