As we stared at this apparent extravagance, it shivered from top to bottom like a belly dancer, then swiftly swept away from us, like a lady in an opera gathering her skirts and running. A whirlwind on land is tricky enough, but when this vortex of wind, is over water, it forms a water spout. Waterspouts can be tricky - often you can't see them stretching down from the clouds. Sometimes, a circular patch of white water is the only warning the crew of a yacht gets, before they enter the violent winds. And there's no warning for a school of fish close to the surface - they just get taken to a better place.
Water spouts are the cause of hundreds of reports of sea food showers.
In Yorkshire in 1844, people held out hats, during a rainstorm, to catch the falling frogs. In 1983 the inhabitants of the small French village of Dilhome found thousands of tiny sea shells scattered across an area roughly the size of a swimming pool. They actually saw them land during a thunderstorm. Yet the village is 80 kilometres inland. These Flying Saucer Nests are flattened circles in the fields, usually in long grass or wheat, oats or corn.