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A dust devil seen in Amboseli National Park, Kenya in 1993. A dust devil (also known regionally as a dirt devil) is a strong, well-formed, and relatively short-lived whirlwind. Its size ranges from small (18 in/half a metre wide and a few yards/metres tall) to large (more than 30 ft/10 m wide and more than half a mile/1 km tall).
During thunderstorm formation, winds move in a direction opposite to the storm's travel, and they move from all directions into the thunderstorm. When the storm collapses and begins to release precipitation, wind directions reverse, gusting outward from the storm and generally gusting the strongest in the direction of the storm's travel.
The Santa Ana Journal newspaper which battled for years to discourage the association between the winds and the town, published a verse with a 1935 news story on wind impacts that nodded to the "devil winds" nomenclature: "The devil sends the naughty winds To blow the skirts on high; But God is just and sends the dust To fill the bad man's eye ...
According to the National Weather Service, a dust devil is a "common wind phenomenon" that looks like a mini tornado (but with less intensity) and can have wind speeds of up to 60 mph.
A whirlwind A dust devil at school ground Whirlwind, 61 km northeast of Broome, Western Australia. A whirlwind is a phenomenon in which a vortex of wind (a vertically oriented rotating column of air) forms due to instabilities and turbulence created by heating and flow gradients. Whirlwinds can vary in size and last from a couple minutes to a ...
The vortex of wind, a type sometimes referred to as a "dust devil" or an eddy, whipped around for several seconds just a few feet from a pool, where guests watched in horror. Other guests were not ...
Large dust devils may pose a danger to equipment from Earth. [1] However, some vortices have had beneficial effects. In 2005, the Spirit rover directly encountered a dust devil which blew off the dust which had accumulated on the rover's solar panels, dramatically increasing power levels and enhancing research productivity. [13]
In desert areas, dust and sand storms are most commonly caused by either thunderstorm outflows, or by strong pressure gradients which cause an increase in wind velocity over a wide area. The vertical extent of the dust or sand that is raised is largely determined by the stability of the atmosphere above the ground as well as by the weight of ...