Polish "Snow Devil" Impresses Hikers

A rare "snow devil" spun through a Polish
national forest recentlh. 

We often see snow blowing in swirls on gusty winter days, but rarely are they sustained like the video in this post.

A man named Michal Bielas was walking throug the Tatra National Park in Poland recently when he came across this impressive "snow devil" spinning through the edges of the forest. A snow devil is basically a dust devil. Just with snow substituted.

Snow devils are much more rare than dust devils. Usually these spinning columns of air need strong sun to heat the ground, causing air to rise, then cool air to swoop in and replace the rising warm air, and a breeze to get things spinning.

It's a lot harder to get the ground warmed up when it's snow covered. Snow reflects the sun's heat. But apparently, in this Polish forest, there was enough rising air, enough of a breeze to get a nice rotation going.  It looks like strong winds hit a steep slope, helping to get the air rotating into the snow devil.

Which means we ended up with this cool viral weather video: