A likely caused the off the coast of Sicily, experts believe. A highly localised waterspout created by a thunderstorm is thought to have hit and capsized the boat, which was anchored near Porticello in the early hours of Monday morning. Experts say extreme winds probably tipped the boat over and it is thought these were most likely caused by a tornado forming over the water in a phenomenon which meteorologists call a waterspout.
Salvo Cocina, of Sicily’s civil protection agency, attributed the damage to the boat, which was carrying 22 people including , the British tech entrepreneur, to a waterspout. He added that the boat was “in the wrong place at the wrong time”. Another theory is that a weather phenomenon called a downburst, which sees high winds and huge precipitation suddenly drop from a thunderstorm, could also have buffeted the Bayesian.
“A waterspout is a tornado over water,” said Dr David Sills, the executive director of the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in Canada. “It’s a legitimate tornado, it’s just over water. The surface doesn’t really matter.
” He told The Telegraph: “The difference between a tornado and a downburst is that with a tornado you’ve got very localised wind. The wind is moving across the surface towards the tornado and then up into the thunderstorm. “If it’s a thunderstorm that’s generating the tornado, then it could be quite intense, highly localised, high amplitude and certainly any water in the are.