Some Cool Random Videos

A still from a video of a dust devil lifting chairs and
other items off the ground in Alberta recently. 

The weather is pretty quiet this week, so it's time for a few random videos.

In Alberta, Canada recently, a dust devil interrupted a softball game.

It was strong enough to lift chairs, jackets, even batting helmets high into the air. Some of these items dropped some distance away in a residential area when the unusually strong dust devil dissipated.

Nobody was seriously hurt. Here's the video:



It's spring, and that means pollen. It's quite a season in the East, as spring has come on suddenly. My nose is running and pollen is not usually an issue for me. This year it is, a little bit.

In Millvillle, New Jersey, somebody decided to tap a pollen-laden tree with some heavy equipment. Here's the result:



Lake Como, Italy, is probably one of the lovliest places to go in the world, but not on Monday, as this brief video snows. Those big splashes in the lake are giant hailstones coming down:



A tornado hit a Sonic restaurant in Louisiana Sunday. Check out the two cars in the parking lot, especially the one that goes flying. It's hard to see it in the dust and debris, but take a close look in this brief video from a surveillance camera.



Finally, here's a rather sad Vermont video. It shows quite a bit of damage to the Causeway path that juts out into Lake Champlain from Colchester. High winds during the storms Friday combined with rather high lake levels caused a lot of erosion.

Pot Tornado Strikes Oregon! (Really A Marijuana Devil)

A "pot devil" crashes through a marijuana
farm in Oregon recently.

You've heard of tornadoes. Firenadoes.. Even Sharknados.

But a security camera in Oregon captured a Potnado.

It wasn't a tornado, but it WAS an unusually strong dust devil blasting through a marijuana farm in southern Oregon that ripped at least one pot plant from the ground and tossed it 15 feet into the air, says Oregon Live.

The potnado was at Siskiyou Sungrow, a legally sanctioned regulated marijuana production farm in Oregon.

It was really a dust devil, something I've written about before.

They form on sunny, warm days with light winds. The sun heats the ground, air rises, and a slight breeze tilts the updraft sideways. That sideways updraft will sometimes concentrate itself into a whirlwind, which is the dust devil.

Dust devils resemble tornadoes, but are never nearly as destructive as twisters. Still, dust devils can cause minor damage.

Here's the video:

Dust Devil Wows At Burlington, Vermont Airport

Dust devil at Burlington, Vermont
International Airport Wedenesday.
Photo by Charlene Whitehouse  

Charlene Whitehouse was at the Burlington International Airport in Vermont when she captured this remarkable scene.

Near the tarmac, with a nice shot of the beautiful Green Mountains, including the iconic Camels Hump in the background, was a well-formed dust devil.

It's a little disconcerting to see, especially since I'm flying out of that very airport Sunday, but the dust devil Whitehouse captured on camera, and almost all of them, are pretty damn harmless.

Still, the well defined dust devil as been the talk of local and even national meteorological circles, since it's such a cool photo. The Weather Channel even featured it. 

Dust devils usually form on hot, dry afternoons. It was 80 degrees and partly sunny Wednesday afternoon in Burlington, so close enough.

As the Weather Channel explains it:

"What likely happened in this situation was that the dark asphalt on the runway heated up faster than the surrounding grass, since grass contains moisture and absorbs some of the heat from the sun.

When this temperature contrast between different ground surfaces develops, it can overcome the large weather influence and create a mini weather patter. The warmer ground surface heats up the air above it, so the air becomes warmer than the ground and begins to rise. As it rises, it pushes through the cooler air above it and and creates a vertical column of warm, rising air.

The cool air that was pushed out of the way then circulates vertically around this column of warm, rising air. If a wind gust comes along, it can blow ths air arrangement onto its side, which forms a dust devil."

Dust devils tend not to be dangerous and last only a short while. Some of the strongest ones can cause some wind damage, but the one in Burlington wasn't likely strong enough to cause damage, had it hit anything.

Wild Dust Devil Stops A Softball Game. For A Minute

A large dust devil scored a home run during
a college softball game in Virginia last Saturday.  

A viral video is circulating now that shows the highlight of a college womens softball game last Saturday between the Lynchburg Hornets and Bridgewater Eagles in Lynchburg, Virginia.

The video is at the bottom of this post.

The star of the game turned out to be a large dust devil. 

Everybody seems incredibly nonchalant as the huge dust devil passes over the infield. The umpire stopped play until the dust devil settled down. Within a minute, though, it was game on!

Dust devils usually hit on nice, sunny days, like the weather Lynchburg was experiencing Saturday.

The sun heats up air near the ground, and that warm air rises into cooler air up above.  More warm air near the surface flows into the spot where the original warm air rose, that air rises, and you get sort of a chimney effect.

Then, wind blowing horizontally into this chimney gets it spinning, and a dust devil forms.

Dust devils rarely hurt anybody or cause damage, though a few of the very strongest ones can get destructive.

Like most dust devils, the one at the Lynchburg softball game caused no harm. It was just kinda fun.

Watch:

Cool "Tumbleweed Tornado" in Albuquerque

 Zillions of tumbleweeds in the air amid a New Mexico dust devil, or
more accurately, tumbleweed devil. Cool! 

Dust devils, those whirls of air that happens sometime in dry, windy, sunny weather are pretty common in arid areas of New Mexico.

Sometimes, there's an added dimension, like this really neat, I guess I would call it a "tumbleweed devil" near Albuquerque, New Mexico last week.

Watch:

Australilan Dust Devil Becomes A Music Festival Dance Partner

A dust devil becomes a dance partner during
an Australian music festival last week 

At the Earthcore Music and Culture Festival in Pyalong, Victoria, Australia last week, as people danced, an unusual dance partner swept into the concert grounds.

A dust devil blew through, giving people a literal whirlwind moment as the music played.

Dust devils form when the sun heats an area of ground more intensely than surrounding areas. Maybe there's darker ground or a lack of foliage that makes the patch of ground heat more than areas nearby.

The hot air rises, through cooler air above, so basically you get a column of warm, rising air. The cool air that has been pushed away by the warm column circulates vertically, up and down. Then a gust of wind knocks that circulating air sideways, so now it circulates horizontally. So it forms into a column of circulating air - a dust devil.

The Australian festival dust devil looks fairly intense at first in the video you see below, so I wonder if it was a little dangerous to get into it.

But nobody got hurt and a good time was had by all.

Watch:

Dustless Dust Devil Raises Havoc At Chilly Rose Bowl Preparations

Tents and other debris are sent aloft during a whirlwind
at the Rose Parade site in Pasadena, CA today. 

As if the predicted temperatures in the 30s for the start of the annual Tournament of Roses parade tomorrow in Pasadena wasn't enough, another weird type of havoc struck preparations today.

A whirlwind hit a Fanfest area today in the runup for the parade. You can see it in the video, below.

The video is titled "Tornado At the Rose Bowl" but it was definitely not a tornado. Notice the clear skies. You need a strong, severe, rotating thunderstorm to get a tornado going.

This was a dust devil. But since there was no dust handy, it was a nearly invisible whirlwind until it started hitting stuff.

Dust devils or whirlwinds are usually pretty harmless. They are a tight swirl of wind that usually does little more than blow some leaves around. You can walk into one and be just fine.

Usually.

Sometimes, dust devils can get strong, almost as strong as a weak tornado. They can, on rare occasions like today's in Pasadena, cause a bit of damage.

It was chilly and windy in Pasadena today, but the sun was out. The sun heated the ground, and the air right near the ground.

Warm air is lighter than cold air, so the air that warmed up near the ground started to rise. The rising air got caught by the strong crosswinds, that formed a tight circle.

So you got the whirlwind, or dustless dust devil that you got today.

There were reports of four minor injuries from this.

But at least it wasn't as bad as a real tornado.

Here's the video:

Whirlwind: British Columbia Teachers Strike Goes Round and Round

Whirling winds whip up papers, placards in
British Columbia teachers' strike.  

There's a teacher's strike in Surrey, British Columbia, and they were out picketing, as strikers tend to do.

Then some odd weather excitement disrupted the picket lines.  

The dust-devil like whirlwind sent placards and papers hundreds of feet into the air. I wonder if Mother Nature was commenting on the strike?

Here''s the video

Guy Runs Into Giant, (Possibly Fake) Strong Dust Devil Just Because

An Austrailian guy ran into this strong dust devil just
because. (Although the whole video might be
fake, you never know with the Internet)  

I'm not sure if I would have done this:

A guy in a viral video from Australia supposedly ran into a large dust devil just so he could take a selfie in the whirlwind.

Dust devils are generally much, much weaker than tornadoes. Usually, they're caused by strong sun heating the ground, causing updrafts. Sometimes a light wind will set the updraft spining, and you get a dust devil.

They're much smaller scale than tornadoes and winds in dust devils are almost always not enough to cause much damage.

But sometimes, they get strong and can cause damage or at least create danger.  In rare cases they can have winds of over 70 mph.

And the dust devil this guy runs into looks pretty strong.  A disclaimer though: This video might be fake. It was uploaded by the same guy who uploaded another viral video of somebody supposedly fighting off a shark in the Sydney, Australia harbor.

Yeah, I'm suspicious.

But whether the video is fake or not, I'll use this as a public service announcement: Dust devils are fun, and you can probably run into one and be OK. But be careful with the strong ones. They can hurt you.

You can watch in the video below:

More Totally Amazing Views of Dust Devils, Tumbleweeds, Tornadoes and Fires

I know I featured a couple posts in the past couple of weeks of dust devils,  tumbleweeds and other dry climate stuff doing amazing things, if only to give us a break from the endless discussions of winter weather.

But wait! There's more!

For fans of weather porn, (the viewing of photos and videos of severe, large or weird storms, no nudity!) we have more.

From Twitter, we got a photo,  originating from @KOB4, shows an enormous dust devil near Las Vegas, New Mexico recently.

(The New Mexico town is not to be confused with the glittery gambling Nevada city.)

This has to be the most humongous dust devil I've ever seen.

Most dust devils don't have strong enough winds to cause damage, but a few do. I bet if this huge
dust devil had hit any of the buildings in the foreground, there would have been damage.

Luckily, no structural damage was reported.

Next, we have a video of a controlled burn at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado, to get rid of some brush.

Or, at least it WOULD have been a controlled burn had the big dust devil not come along to stir up a ton of tumbleweeds, set them aflame, and spread the blaze all over the place.

Luckily, the crew got things under control a little while later, and the so-called control burn didn't scorch THAT much more land than it should have.

The video is next but warning: The idiot who posted the video decided screaming death metal music would be the perfect accompanyment to the visuals. So turn the volume to mute before watching.

Your ears will thank you, and you'll still get your weather porn fix:




Finally, we have a spectacular tornado in Mexico that struck Saturday. Quite the spectacle: