Several videos of the spouts were captured by onlookers, including the officers at the Phuket Tourist Assistance Center at Chalong Pier, and shared online.
Brent McInnes of the Phuket Cruising Yacht Club, located on the Chalong bayfront, witnessed the spectacle firsthand, and quickly dismissed the term “tornado”.
Of note, Mr McInnes has lived in Phuket and sailed local waters for more nearly three decades.
While the incident saw the intense highly concentrated wind that comes with such weather phenomena, Mr McInnes described the incident as a confluence of two separate weather fronts converging on Chalong Bay.
"It was two opposing weather fronts. One from the northeast, the other came over the hill from Kata from the southwest," he said.
“The two weather fronts met over Chalong anchorage, causing many revolving water spouts. This continued for about 45 minutes before they both extinguished each other,” he added.
“I personally clocked wind speeds at over 30 knots, and one yachtie with his instruments on clocked wind speeds of 40 knots, it definitely was not a ‘tornado’,” Mr McInnes said.
The confluence created about six to eight separate water spouts, Mr McInnes confirmed.
“At one stage there were two water spouts, one about 60 metres across at the base, the other about 100m across, moving through the anchorage. They were moving [spinning] in opposite directions,” he explained.
“Some boats were flicked around on their mooring, and there may have been some damage by boats colliding, but other than that the only damage were seeing canvas [biminis] that people had not taken down being torn off,” he added.
To the best of his knowledge, there were no injuries reported as caused by the incident, Mr McInnes said.
The water spouts today was a rare occurrence, he noted.
“Water spouts do occur in the area, but what happened today is best described as a ‘weather anomaly’,” he said.