Waterspout: 7/14/06!

I'm to lazy to read all that but whats a land spout? A normal tornado?

basically a surface rotation, or a non-destructive tornado that looks like a rope...similar to waterspouts..just made of debris, not water.

It's not non-destructive, and the NWS will still issue a Tornado warning.. It just forms differently than a regular tornado, in the case of the Newaygo County Michigan landspout, it formed because of the differences in temperature and wind direction between the lake breeze/land air masses, and a small rainshower which the lake breeze had provided lift for.

From the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids:

To help visualize these circulations imagine two hoses facing each where the water flowing out of the hoses represents the wind on either side of a wind shift. If you were to set the hoses several feet apart and offset just a bit (i.e., not flowing directly into each other) you would see small circulations develop as the two streams of water which are flowing in opposite directions interact with each other. You could also mimic this effect if you lit a candle or incense and then moved your hand slowly downward alongside the smoke that is rising from the incense. As two air streams on opposite sides of a front or wind shift interact small eddies or circulations form along the interface of the two airstreams.

ooh..well i must have gotten it confused with something else. Its been a while since i took those meteorology classes..