Wollongong awestruck by multiple water spouts along coast

Carolyn Hitchcock was in the car when she saw beautiful "fluffy clouds" around 9.30am so stopped on Bong Bong Road in Horsley to take photos, when a full water spout began to form.

"I have never seen one before, only photos on Facebook and media," she said. "I saw a couple off to the right and they looked like they were going to form but they didn't come to anything. Then I saw [the main one] and thought 'that is definitely a waterspout'."

Mrs Hitchcock said the sighting made her day.

The Bureau of Meteorology's Helen Reid noted some "disturbance" on their weather radar, but said the occurrence of water spouts were often "fleeting" although multiples were often seen within an hour if wind conditions were right.

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"It's just a very fine balance between everything," the meteorologist told the Mercury.

"It's not associated like the tornadic conditions of a thunderstorm, it's a similar sort of whirl in the atmosphere but it needs to be fairly calm so that there's a gentle shift in the wind direction as it moves up."

Dr Reid said the radar showed "up and down movement in the atmosphere" with calm winds which would be "appropriate" for the formation of water spouts.

"It's not a huge shift in wind direction, it could be also wind speed as well," she said. "It's just some way of getting a rolling motion in the air that's moving and enough of a lift happening to extend it up."