Global warming may have contributed to the freak storm that sank a luxury British-flagged yacht off the coast of Sicily on Monday, scientists have said. One man died and six people were missing, including British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, after the “Bayesian”, a 56-metre-long (184-ft) sailboat, was suddenly hit by ferocious weather. Lynch, who was acquitted in June in a big US fraud trial, was among the six people who remain unaccounted for after their chartered sailboat sank off Porticello, when a tornado over the water known as a waterspout struck the area overnight, said Salvo Cocina of Sicily ’s civil protection agency.
Italian climatologist Luca Mercalli, president of the Italian meteorological society, said the episode could have been a waterspout, essentially a tornado over water, or else a downburst, a more frequent phenomenon that doesn’t involve the rotation of the air. “We don’t know which it was because it all happened in the dark in the early hours of the morning, so we have no photographs,” he said. Fisherman Francesco Cefalu’ said he had seen a flare from shore at around 4:30 a.
m. and immediately set out to the site but by the time he got there, the Bayesian had already sunk, with only cushions, wood and other items from the superyacht floating in the water. “ But for the rest, we didn’t find anyone,” he said from the port hours later.
He said that he immediately alerted the coast guard and stayed on site for three hours, but didn’t .