Kayak fishing guide Brandon Barton was out with a client off of Pensacola Beach, Florida, in early September fishing for red snapper. He had been keeping an eye on a distant storm when the wind picked up. Deciding to play it safe, the anglers started making their way back to shore. While they were still about half a mile out, a massive waterspout dropped down on the ocean in front of them.
“I felt pretty confident that we could get back to shore safely,” said Barton. “So it was a little bit scary but pretty exciting because it’s just something cool that you don’t get to see, especially that size and that close. Obviously, I didn’t want to get too much closer to it, but to get that close was kind of cool.”
Better safe than sorry
Barton says they had seen a much smaller waterspout about 10 minutes earlier. While the first had prompted them to move to a safer spot, the second waterspout stopped them in their tracks. In a video he took, Barton calls the waterspout “absolutely insane.”…