Kitesurfer Grant Woodgate was astonished when he spotted a cluster of tornadoes just off the coast of Martinhal beach, near Sagres, at the end of last month. Grant was on an early morning kite-surfing trip and noticed that the strong easterly wind was giving rise to worryingly low and threatening black clouds. “It was really bad weather so I decided against kite-surfing,” he explains. “Then, in the distance, I noticed loads of mini-tornadoes coming towards the land.” Grant says that some of these twisters almost hit the cliffs at Sagres and were getting bigger.
The Algarve, known for its mild weather, is not the place where people would usually expect to see tornadoes, but, according to Grant, spells of mini-tornadoes have happened before and are not as rare as people may think. He claims that locals in the Sagres area had been noticing dead fish scattered around the tops of mountains following stormy weather and, so far, were unable to explain their presence so high up a cliff.
Grant thinks that tornadoes are responsible for shifting all the fish and have allegedly caught up other things in their powerful spirals as well. “The owner of the bar at Martinhal said that his dog and his freezer once got caught up in a twister,” explains Grant. So, it seems they are not as rare as one would first imagine – be careful next time you’re walking your dog on Sagres beach in stormy weather!
