Specialist divers continue to search for six people who were onboard a luxury superyacht which capsized off the coast of Sicily on Monday morning - but questions have been asked about why the vessel sank. According to vessel tracking app Vesselfinder, the boat left the Sicilian port of Milazzo on 14 August and and was last tracked east of Palermo on Sunday evening, with a navigation status of "at anchor". It is believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water - otherwise known as a waterspout - causing Bayesian to capsize.
There are separate reports the boat's mast snapped during the freak storm and other factors in the boat's sinking include water entering through hatches and doors which had been left open because of warm weather off the Italian coast. Witnesses have described seeing a waterspout form during the storm before the sinking of the Bayesian. Most are familiar with what tornadoes look like - they are rotating columns of destructive winds, protruding from the base of clouds down to the ground.
According to BBC Weather, waterspouts are just that too, but are over water rather than land. Instead of dust and debris swirling around the core of strong winds, it is water mist whipped up from the surface. Like tornadoes, most are only short-lived, narrow columns and are not easily picked out on weather radars, so many will go unreported.
However, they are not as rare as you may think. According to the there were 18 confirmed waterspouts off the coast of Italy on 1.